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JACK AND HIS ISLAND 


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Jack and His Island 

A Boy s Adventures along the 
Chesapeake in the W ar 
of 1812 

% / 

LUCY MEACHAM THRUSTON 

h 

Author of “Mistress Brent,” “A Girl of Virginia,” etc. 


3!flu0trateb bp 

CLYDE O. DE LAND 


Jkr- 



Boston 

, Brown, and Company 
1902 


Little. 


THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 
Two Cowes Received 

SEP. 25 1902 


Copyright entry 

CLAS8 d XXa No. 

3 4 > 

COPY B. 



Copyright , 1902 , 

By Little, Brown, and Company. 

All rights reserved. 


Published October, 1902 


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UNIVERSITY PRESS • JOHN WILSON 
AND SON • CAMBRIDGE, U. S 0 A. 


TO 

MY DEAR FRIEND 


AUGUSTA L. WATKINS. 


\ 


I 


PROLOGUE. 


TN the stress of war, characters form 
-*■ quickly. So it has been in the histories 
of all countries. Boys, youths, pressed by 
circumstances, do the deeds of manhood and 
play the part of men. So it was with me. 
The decisive years whose tale is herein set 
forth ran from the early age of thirteen to 
nigh my sixteenth birthday. They set the 
course of my life. For a quarter of a cen- 
tury that course has lain straightforward, 
sun-bright with joy, shadowed with sorrow, 
sometimes ; but ever straightforward. I 
have writ the tale of these years. 




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

“ In all good fortune it was Marshall ” . . Frontispiece 

“ ‘ And . . . this is Miss Elizabeth Rousby ’ ” Page 108 

“ There in full view, . . . was the whole 

British fleet ” “ 184 

“ * Give — the — order — to — retreat ! ’ the 

Commodore gasped ” “ 227 

“ As we ran the crowd grew ” “ 


284 














JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


CHAPTER I. 

T HOUGH I was stiffened from long 
driving and cold with the unwonted 
chill of the June evening, I was never more 
wide awake and alert than when Rob came 
dashing up before the bright lights and 
swinging sign of the Golden Horse. 

All the way he had found me a quiet 
lad (I was ever fonder of action than of 
speech) ; his ringing laugh had waked few 
echoes from the pale-faced boy by his side 
on the driver’s seat, and his fund of stories 
had fallen on listless ears. Yet I think he 
was not hurt thereby. He knew that my 
father had died in Boston and that I went 
my way to lukewarm relatives in Georgia ; 
and that by the counsel of that dear father, 
given when he knew his boy would be left 
alone among strangers, I was making my 


2 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


way with all speed to Baltimore by the 
overland route, which was the speediest and 
safest, now that England strove to keep a 
blockade along our coast, and our own gov- 
ernment placed so many hindrances that no 
packet dared show her nose outside her 
harbor. 

In Baltimore I would meet Tom Marshall, 
a young man well known and loved of all, 
and hailing from his old neighborhood in 
Georgia, and together we would seek his old 
home ; for though my father could not bear 
to dwell amidst its scenes, and sought ref- 
uge in travel from its bitter sweet memories 
of my mother, yet when illness stole upon 
him and he saw he must make provision 
for me, his desire was to send me home. 

Could anything have moved me from my 
deep grief it would have been the huge 
wagon belonging to the “ land marines ” in 
which I must travel. But neither the sleek 
horses with their crests of tinkling bells, nor 
the great blue wagon stored to its white top 
with merchandise, nor the staring black 
letters printed on white cloth and fastened 
on either side to tell to all the wagon’s title 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


3 


in the new marines, “ The Maryland Clip- 
per/' and its motto “ No Impressment/' 
roused more than a passing interest. In 
Boston lay all I loved. Before me were but 
vague memories and hopes that would take 
no rosy tinge. 

So Rob had used his best endeavors and 
fared but badly. For surely it must have 
vexed him that I had no eye for the sleek- 
ness of his horses, nor his triumph when we 
passed some slower ship, nor no elation when 
we browbeat our way royally and were first 
over some ferriage when many another 
wagon had to lay by and bide its time, and 
no cheer at the bountiful meals the wayside 
inns provided us. Still he never lost heart, 
and now that we were nearing Baltimore 
there was naught that he left unsaid to 
rouse me to an interest in the bustling, 
growing place, which he boasted would soon 
excel the best of our coast cities. He told 
me of the fair glimpse of it nestling about 
its harbor we would have as we breasted the 
high hills over which the road wound ; yet 
we came upon it at last at night, and in the 
clear glittering starlight following the storm 


4 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


which had caused us to lay by far up the 
road. 

For hundreds of yards ere we reached the 
inn the road was lined with wagons and 
champing horses, slowly mouthing the last 
oats in the long troughs fastened to the 
front of the huge wagons. Nor had I ever 
seen aught like the number of them on our 
twenty-five days’ journey from Boston, for 
here, as Rob had already told me, we struck 
likewise the trade from the West, even unto 
Ohio. 

Every window of the inn was alight, in 
the fresh breeze after the storm the trees 
along the pavement’s edge were bending 
and swaying, and the gilded horse before the 
house, creaking upon his post, seemed rear- 
ing and prancing in the star-lit and lamp- 
pierced dusk of the summer night. Yet I 
gave but a thought to it, well as I remember 
the scene. It was the people who drew me 
— teamsters from the West and North, trav- 
ellers biding a time at the inn, citizens of the 
town gathering in knots and groups, with 
eager tongues and earnest faces. 

I swung myself silently down from my 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


5 


high perch, for Rob must drive with clatter 
right up to the door, and I left him grum- 
bling on his seat. 

“In God’s name,” I heard him say, 
“ what ’s the cry now ? Ahoy there ! ” he 
shouted in the sea fashion the teamsters 
affected. “ Ahoy, there ! Has the Golden 
Horse no welcome for Rob Ruxton ? ” 

At that I saw a big man, stockless and 
coatless, making his bustling way out of 
the door, and I slipped away. 

I wanted to see and understand it all, 
and I had no time now for Rob and his 
jests. What meant all these groups, these 
earnest faces and excited voices ? I strolled 
eagerly near them, but could hear nothing 
that I could understand. The gate leading 
to the great yard beside the inn and the 
stables at the side of it was flung wide open 
and was choked with men, as I made my 
way through them. Here in the soft dusk 
I could see the dark forms of cattle, driven in 
that day and resting for the Monday’s sale. 
I heard voices far away near the stable, 
and, as I went hurrying across the yard, 
hot with the animals’ heat and foul with 


6 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


their smell, I tripped, where I had noted no 
object, and went headlong into a soft flut- 
tering mass. The air rang with goblin 
cries. I would have been sadly frightened 
had not my arms caught something as I 
fell, something I knew on the instant was 
nothing more and no worse than a big live 
turkey ; but I remembered what Rob had 
told me of the great droves of them the 
men brought into the town from the West, 
and I stumbled to my feet, half ashamed to 
face Rob himself. 

“ Why, Jack,” he cried, astonished, “ have 
you lost your way ? ” It was hard for him 
not to twit me, I know, still be it said to 
his credit, quick as he ever was to turn the 
joke on any one, he never laughed when his 
laughter would make one tingle for it. 

“ Here comes the light ! It takes an old 
hand and one wiser than I to make his way 
here.” 

He pulled me aside, as a hostler, lantern 
in one hand and with the other leading our 
horses, came quickly through the yard. 

“ I must see the beasts well tended to,” 
he declared, “ else they will not be ready 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


7 


for the journey back, and I must be going 
Tuesday. Two days’ rest for the beasts and 
one for myself. Monday the wagon must 
be unloaded and refilled with her new 
cargo.” 

What else he said I heard not. I had 
paused at the stable door. Behind me in 
the dark I could hear the trampings of 
many horses, and far down the stable aisles 
could see the faint twinkle of the lantern, 
where the hostler guided our beasts to their 
stalls ; before me were the restless moving 
and the deep breathing of the cattle, and 
now and then the startled turkeys rent the 
air with their cries ; but above all this was 
that hum of voices, that sound of human 
movement, something was abroad in the 
street. 

I found it not yet. Rob, with his hand 
on my shoulder, led me across the yard 
another way and to the door of the great 
kitchen, where fare for us had been spread, 
and he was overflowing with his good humor 
and the enjoyment of his meal, for there 
were oysters fresh from their shell on the 
board before us and biscuits and corn-pone 


8 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


yet hot, to say naught of cold capon and 
venison. 

“Aye, give me the good hot bread of 
Maryland,” he was saying at the close of 
the hearty meal, “ none of your hard brown 
bread and week-old bakings for me; ’tis 
why the men are so lean and so dyspeptic, 
and the beer” — he drained his mug — 
“ there ’s none can touch it,” and he held it 
laughingly to the black who waited on us. 

“ Come, lad, drain thy mug.” 

But I shook my head. I had not come 
to love the frothing drink, nor though I 
was consumed with curiosity had I ques- 
tioned ; a lad of 1812 , even though he lis- 
tened to men’s talk and was well grounded 
in public affairs, knew yet another thing — 
to hold his tongue. So my father taught 
me. Rob would have told me quickly enough 
had 1 questioned him, but Rob was used to 
thinking first of himself. His beasts well 
cared for, himself well fed, he was ready for 
the gossip of the town. 

“ Bring me the ‘ Federal Republican,’ ” he 
commanded, and noted not that the negro’s 
face turned ashy as he spoke. “ I have not 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


9 


seen a paper since I left the ferriage of New 
York/’ he went on, carelessly drumming 
his finger points upon the board. 

“ What ! ” as the negro came back empty 
handed, “ go and bring me the ‘ Federal 
Republican ’ ! ” and Rob’s tanned face turned 
red with anger. 

The negro was gone many minutes, while 
I, my supper done, fidgeted in my chair 
and looked restlessly about me. 

“ Nay, lad,” said Rob kindly, noting my 
mood, “bide but a minute and I will go 
with you ; ” and he laughed and reached 
carelessly for the crumpled sheet the negro 
laid before him. “ ’Fore God,” he swore, 
“ it looks as if it had been well read. Let me 
see first the Marine news ; ” and he laughed 
again good-naturedly and pulled the candle 
nearer him. 

“Come, lad, and see the news,” he added 
craftily, and I knew what those words 
meant. Rob was a slow and painstaking 
reader, but he would own it to no such 
youth as I ; nay, we only read together, so 
I pulled my heavy chair nearer his, and 
put my head nearer his curly poll in the 


10 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


candle light. Nor did we heed that the 
kitchen was left to us alone. Out in 
the dining room were a great hum of voices 
and clinking of mugs, yet here, where 
Rob had elected to have his supper, there 
was quiet. The coals smouldered in the 
great fireplace, skillets from whence had 
come our flaky biscuits stood on the ashy 
hearth, the crane hung an idle arm across 
the chimney-mouth, and even the black 
who had tended us was outside. 

Rob was all complacency. “ We ’ll have 
a few words to add to these,” he boasted, as 
he folded the sheet down to the items he 
sought. “ We’ve left the Teaser behind 
and the Sailors’ Misery was floundering in 
the swamps of the Susquehanna. Ha ! ha ! 
the Maryland Clipper, twenty-five days out 
from Boston ! ’T will sound well ; twice has 
it been printed thus, and once again will it 
so stand. ’Tis a tale few captains have 
equalled.” 

“ Horse-Marine Intelligence,” I read, 
while Rob chuckled as he never failed to 
at the joke; “ arrived this day, the three- 
horse ship Dreadnought, Captain David 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


11 


Allen, eighteen days out from New York, 
spoke in the latitude of Weathersfield the 
Aspen, Friend Alley master, from New 
York bound homeward to Lynn/’ and so on, 
Rob making a running comment on each. 

“ Now, lad, we ’ll to the office and write a 
few lines more for them.” He pushed back 
his chair, humming the chorus I had heard 
on many a long and weary day of that 
early summer: 

“ Our march is on the turnpike road, 

Our home is at the inn.” 

But I, turning the soiled and crumpled 
paper carelessly, had caught sight of lines 
whose heading chained me to my seat. 
“ Listen ! ” I cried, as I hurriedly began to 
read. The article was heralded with a 
quotation : 

“ 4 Thou hast done a deed whereat valor will weep.’ 

“ Without funds, without taxes, without a navy 
or adequate fortifications, with one hundred and 
fifty millions of our property in the hands of the 
declared enemy, without any of his in our power, 
and with a vast commerce afloat, our rulers have 


12 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


promulgated a war against the clear and decided 
sentiments of the vast majority of the nation. 
As the consequences will soon be felt, there is 
no need of pointing them out to the few who 
have not the sagacity to apprehend them. In- 
stead of employing our pen in this dreadful 
detail, we think it more apposite to delineate the 
course we are determined to pursue as long 
as the war lasts. We mean to represent in as 
strong colors as we are able that it is unneces- 
sary, inexpedient, and entered into from a partial, 
personal, and, as we believe, motives bearing 
upon their front marks of undisguised foreign 
influence which cannot be mistaken. We mean 
to use constitutional argument and every legal 
means to render as odious and suspicious to the 
American people, as they deserve to be, the 
patrons of this highly impolitic and destructive 
war, in the fullest persuasion that we shall be 
supported and ultimately applauded by nine- 
tenths of our countrymen, and that our silence 
would be treason to them.” 

“ Zounds ! ” cried Rob, as he pushed back 
his chair and jolted the heavy board till the 
dishes clattered, “ treason, why — ” 

“ It ’s treason, rank treason, he writes, 1 ” 
I exclaimed, aghast at such language. 

For in spite of my hurried reading, the 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


13 


meaning was clear enough to us. That 
article printed that day, June 20, 1812, in 
a Baltimore paper, had maddened the popu- 
lace. This was the meaning of the angry 
groups. 


CHAPTER II. 


W E hastened out from the quiet kitchen. 

Porch and street were thronged. 
The crowd in the streets grew to a mob. 
Down Market Street fierce cries and threats 
could be heard above the hum of angry 
voices ; but the mob, though fierce, did no 
violence that night. We made our way 
through it, Rob and I, as far down the main 
street as the great market and the marshy 
sides of the Falls ; and so I first saw the 
city. But when we turned aside, not far 
from the water s edge, and went a square 
or two, we found the street (Hanover, Rob 
called it) as peaceful as the villages we had 
thundered through. The women were sit- 
ting at their doors, the young girls were 
strolling arm in arm, and the children were 
playing in the street. We turned and came 
again to Market Street and across to the 
new sheds of the Lexington market, where 
there were sights enough to make us forget 
all else. Then in spite of my deep eagerness 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 15 

Eob would have it, we must go back to the 
Golden Horse and go to bed. 

The morrow, the Sabbath within the 
town, I shall never forget, though my wak- 
ing thought was one of dismay. I had not 
remembered even to ask for Tom Marshall. 
Was he here, as my father thought he would 
be? Was his expedition from the West 
ended, and would he be ready to journey 
southward ? If he were, when should we 
find a wagon thither, or might we adven- 
ture out of the bay, stealing down the long 
fringe of islands and inlets ? 

Up to this time I had had no fears ; now 
I was beset with uncertainty. Eob must 
be gone in two days. I knew not a soul 
within the town. I writhed and turned 
and twisted in the hole my body had made 
in the feather bed, and my restlessness 
roused Eob from his deep slumber. 

My troubled face met his waking eyes. 
“ Faith, lad, you look as if your late hours 
last night had sickened you,” he said, as 
he gave himself a turn in the soft feathers 
and pillowed his tousled head upon his 
sinewy arm. 


16 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


I must have looked woe-begone, for after 
a sleepy, half-serious look at me, he began 
again : “ Where are your red cheeks ? ” 
and he actually pinched me, as if I were 
a girl, though he stopped quickly enough at 
the thrust I gave him. 

“ Well ! well ! Truth, I thought last night 
the worst of your humors was over ! ” 

I was silent, and Rob gave a long yawn 
or two, then sprang out of bed. The sun 
was already shining in the windows he 
pushed open. Looking upward through them 
I could see the sky, deep blue, and looking 
lower down, the roof tops and a slender 
spire. A chiming bell reminded me it was 
the Sabbath, and I set myself quickly to 
work to get into my clothes. One thing 
my father and I had ever observed in our 
wandering life — wherever we were to re- 
member the Sabbath was the day of the 
Lord and to seek His house should it be 
near. 

I was a silent lad by nature and heart- 
sick, I fear, spite the lessons of courage and 
self-control I had laid to heart, so it was not 
till Rob had gotten his jug of hot water 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


17 


from without the door and had shaved his 
face as clean as a woman’s — Rob was un- 
like most teamsters in this, and withstood 
many a jest on his foppery — that I spoke 
of the matter which moved me. 

“ Where,” I said, as I buttoned the fas- 
tenings of my bright blue coat across my 
chest, precisely as Rob was buttoning his, — 
“ where can we find Tom Marshall ? ” 

“ At Gadsby’s ; that is where the swells 
stop. You did not look for him here ? This 
is for poor devils like me, and the drivers 
and stock men and such like; ” and he turned 
himself before the small swinging glass 
above the chest of drawers for a laughing 
look at his curly head, oiled and perfumed, 
his smooth cheek and high stock. 

Rob went to his open bag and took out 
a flashing charm and black ribbon and 
thrust them and the watch he wore into his 
waistband, then he turned himself about 
in dandified enjoyment of his yellow trou- 
sers and blue coat, with shining buttons of 
brass. 

“ Faith,” he declared, “ ’t is well to be 
dressed once in two whole months.” 

2 


18 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


“But where did you get them, Rob ?” I 
asked innocently. 

“ Right here ! ” and he pushed up a 
bureau drawer and snapped the lock, and 
put the key back upon his ring. 

“ But — ” 

“ But,” mimicked Rob, “ I am a good cus- 
tomer of the Golden Horse, lad, and why 
should I not have a drawer here locked with 
my own key in the room I always sleep in ? ” 

“ You did n’t keep any in Boston.” 

Rob’s tanned face went red so suddenly 
and his laugh was so queer I was about to 
ask some other thing of him, when he came 
up quickly and laid his hand upon my 
shoulder, and together we stood looking for 
a moment out into the street. The bright 
freshness of the night was yet abroad, the 
maples were bending to the wind, and the 
sky where we saw its arch above the chim- 
ney tops was deep and clear and blue. 

Far up Paca Street we could see the huge 
wagons, the tethered horses, and the team- 
sters, rough-looking fellows for the main, 
gossiping together or leading the beasts to 
the big trough of the pump at the corner. 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


19 


Rob smiled as he looked at them. He 
thought of himself, I know, rested and 
dressed and dandified, and of the men 
there. I was beginning to see what foppish 
ways he had reserved for Baltimore. 

A robin flitting about the maples lighted 
on a bough beneath us and began to sing his 
heartening counsel of “ Cheer up ! cheer up ! ” 

“ Well said ! I believe you need it, Jack ; 
’tis good advice. Come, we’ll get some 
breakfast and then go to Gadsby’s.” 

But breakfast done, Rob began to fidget. 

“ What will you do all day ? ” he asked. 
“ Perhaps you would like to go to church ; 
there are some fine churches and pretty 
girls.” Then he reddened a little and finally 
blurted out, “ If you will but wait here a 
few moments, I will go down to Gadsby’s and 
send Mr. Marshall up to you ; ” and then, as 
if pleased at his ready wit, he went quickly 
away. 

I went out on the narrow porch fronting 
the street and waited and waited. 

By and by many a person came strolling 
along the way, but none I could take for 
my father’s young friend, nor was there a 


20 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


glimpse of Rob till many wearisome mo- 
ments were past. Then he came up the 
street alone. His face was full of light and 
laughter, though he looked chapfallen when 
he saw me. 

“ Poor fellow, I had no idea, the time 
seemed so short ! ” he began embarrassedly, 
but I cut him short with one word. 

“ Marshall ? ” 

“ Not there ; nay, he is out of town for the 
day only. He stopped for a while at the 
tavern, and now makes his home on Charles 
Street with some French refugees newly 
come. He is gone for the day to some 
merchant’s house whose summer home is 
five miles without the city. He will return 
by sunset and seek you. They told me, his 
friends, he was on the lookout for you.” 

“Well,” said I impatiently, “let’s go to 
church.” I picked up my pot hat and 
smoothed it quickly, put it on my head, 
and went down the steps, Rob lagging 
behind. 

At the corner he caught up with me. 

“ Which way? ” he asked. 

“ I don’t know — anywhere.” 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


21 


We stood still a few moments, the hot 
sunlight blazing down upon us, and finally 
Rob said : “ As for churches, I ’m going to 
meeting.” 

“ What ’s the difference ? ” 

“ Meeting? Well, that’s the Quaker 
church, and a mighty fine new one they have 
near here, too.” 

I plucked up interest. “ Let ’s go. I 
never saw a Quaker meeting.” 

Rob hesitated a trifle more. “ Now see, if 
you could come back alone — ” 

I nodded impatiently. 

“ Well, watch the way you go, lad, and 
come on ; there ’s only one corner anyway, 
and I guess you can remember that.” 

So off we went, I with a new interest now, 
and Rob with an interest too, judging by 
his stride, and soon we were swinging 
around Lombard Street, and there before us, 
with green trees at the pavement edge and 
green sward running up to the steps, was 
the new meeting house. 

Rob hurried me in, and not till I was 
seated could I form much idea of the new 
scenes about me. Then I saw but little. 


22 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


The pews were high. We were in one half 
of the building with all the men of the con- 
gregation. Opened windows showed the 
other half and the women folk. 

The rustling and whispering died away. 
Silence settled upon us more profound than 
that of any forest depth. It deepened, till 
I felt I could not stand it. I must move, 
speak. I turned to seek aid of Rob. The 
softened look of his face, the tender smile 
lurking about his mouth, his downcast 
eyes, helped me more than speech ; and, 
looking downward where he seemed to be 
gazing, I saw his watch charm, a crystal of 
many-sided glass, in his hand, the black 
ribbon folded at its back. As he held it, it 
caught the reflection of a face, a dainty 
miniature of a clear pink cheek and white 
forehead and wide curving eyebrows and 
lashes curled against the cheek, and half 
shrouded by the bonnet of gray. I drew 
myself high as I could in my seat and looked 
furtively through the open sashes. There 
were women pleased and content, there 
were children striving as I had been to be 
quiet and well mannered, and there in a 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 23 

pew corner was the girl at whose reflection 
Rob was gazing. 

I had food now for thought. I under- 
stood his caution as to my way. I resolved 
to be off the moment we moved, but I 
knew not when it came. There was a mur- 
mur about me. Rob rose slowly to his 
feet ; the aisle had already filled and we 
must take our time, and the steps were 
crowded when we reached them. 

I saw the girl's face at last, flushing as 
her blue eyes met Rob's, and I jumped 
from the step, remembered my corner, and 
turned tavernward. 

I knew now why he had been so anxious 
as to his apparel, and why he played the 
spark with so high a hand in Baltimore. I 
knew, too, why I had been left alone ; still, 
to his credit be it said, he left me not that 
afternoon. 

Dinner done, we must needs go wandering 
over the town. Down Market Street, to the 
Falls and to the harbor and the wharves, 
where the houses near them, with their 
many windowed gables turned waterward, 
gazed on an idle scene; idle not only 


24 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


because it was the Sabbath, but because the 
saucy ships lay with furled rigging in the 
harbor and dared not go coasting New Eng- 
land-ward nor sailing down the shining bay 
to West Indian port. Only the bay packets 
were busy. So Rob told me, as we loitered 
on the wharf and watched the June sun- 
light flashing on the water or shining on 
the white wings of the gulls as we leaned 
over the wharf’s edge to watch the crabs 
go scuttling by. 

Then we must up along the Falls and 
cross the wooden bridge to Fell’s Point. 
There, at the wharves of the Point, was 
a tangle of masts, and there, too, Rob came 
upon a friend whose ship was to do me a 
service I little thought of on that bright 
June day. 

The sun was sinking over the hills beyond 
the river ere we turned homeward. 

Some one was awaiting us, the negro told 
us as we turned in at the Golden Horse ; and 
going quickly into the office, I came face to 
face with Tom Marshall. When I first saw 
him I held back as if for Rob, but Rob was 
gone. The tall, straight figure, the quiet, 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 25 

haughty face thatched with fair hair, looked 
forbidding to me who had been so long used 
to Rob’s merry eye and cheery speech. He 
greeted me kindly enough, and listened to 
my short tale of my father’s death, though 
he knew it all from a letter my father had 
caused to be sent to Gadsby’s. 

“And he wished me to be your guardian,” 
he said, when I had finished my halting tale, 
and he smiled so kindly that I lost my first 
dread of him. “I am honored by your 
father’s trust, young as I am ; ” and he 
flushed at my wondering look. “ But I look 
old enough to you ; well, that is but right. 
I can double your years, so twenty-six must 
take care of — ” 

“Thirteen,” said I respectfully, not no- 
ticing he had already spoken my age. 

“ Ah, you are tall enough, but slim and 
somewhat pale.” 

“ I have been long housed.” 

“ Ah ! ” 

“ Save for my journey here.” 

“ Your father’s illness — ” 

“ He had been ill for months.” 

“ He never wrote it.” 


26 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


“ He never spoke of it. He kept up, 
gave me my lessons — ” 

“ So he looked to your instructions him- 
self, ’’ said Marshall, as if glad to turn to 
lighter topics. 

“ Wherever we were.” 

“ Faith, I hope you ’ve profited. I ’m 
somewhat rusty myself.” 

“ When we reach Georgia — ” I began. 

“ Aye, when we do, but affairs grow worse 
here, the wagons go less and less often, 
shipping is dangerous. Would you be will- 
ing to bide here until Captain Ruxton is 
gone ? ” he added hesitatingly. “ It would 
be best, perhaps. I have urgent matters to 
attend to.” 


CHAPTER III. 


S O it was settled. Tom left me at the 
Golden Horse under Rob’s care till he 
should be gone ; and the two men who had 
eyed each other askance at first, Tom no 
doubt thinking Rob a pretentious and dandi- 
fied fellow, and Rob dubbing him a proud 
coxcomb, fell into friendlier feelings in their 
talk over my own poor affairs. 

There was no sunshine streaming into 
my room when Rob woke me fussing about 
on the morrow, but a gray faint dawn in 
which I could barely see him, as he bustled 
about making a toilet far different from 
that of the Sabbath. Instead of his stock, 
a silk handkerchief was knotted about his 
firm throat, and the brown Kerseys he wore 
on his long trip replaced his gay coat and 
breeches. 

I watched him lazily for a moment or 
two, and then sprang from my hot nest in 
the feathers. 


28 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


“ What are you going to do, youngster ? ” 
he asked cheerily, as I began hastily to 
dress. 

“ To do ! ” repeated I with astonishment. 

“ Aye ! ” and then he laughed, for he had 
seen without the telling that I had no idea 
save to accompany him. 

“ There ’s an hour or two more for 
dreams,” he said carelessly. 

“ What are you going to do ? ” I asked 
abruptly. 

“ Zounds ! there is work for every mo- 
ment of the day ! ” 

And so I found in truth. Early as the 
sun rose those long June days, his light was 
not yet abroad in the streets when I was 
at my old post by the driver’s side, and he, 
with the reins of his sleek six horses held 
firmly in his skilful hands, was turning 
them past the corner and into Market Street. 
The high winds of the day before had died 
into the stillness of the early summer’s 
morn. A mocking-bird on the maples be- 
hind us trilled into song, and rounding the 
corner from Gadsby’s came the early coach 
for Washington. The driver put a horn to 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


29 


his lips and blew a blast that drowned the 
tinkling of our bells and all other sounds, 
as we went rattling past. 

Other wagons were moving down the 
street, here and there the prentice boys were 
taking down the shutters from the win- 
dows, gay with haberdashery or other finery. 
It all looked cheery enough to me, for my 
heart was lightening from its intolerable 
load of sorrow, and a keen, tingling interest 
in all about me already beset me. 

“ Will any one be abroad ?” I asked 
wonderingly, as we set out. 

“ There ’s one that will,” said Rob shortly. 

It seemed to me to be an hour when the 
merchants would either be rubbing sleepy 
eyes, or turning again, like the sluggard my 
father preached to me of, who was always 
solacing himself with his lazy refrain of 
“ A little more slumber and a little more 
sleep.” 

But Rob knew otherwise. 

“ There ’s one that will be there ! ” he 
said, and he was right. 

He swung his horses around Market 
Street and into the narrow way of Gay, and 


30 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


drew up a square below by a big brick ware- 
house, and a young man came briskly to 
the door at the sound of hoof-beats and 
tinkling of bells. 

The shutters here were down and the 
doors wide open for the cool winds from 
the harbor. As far as I could see inside, 
the dark worn floor was shining with its 
morning sprinkling and sweeping, and the 
whole place, grim and uninviting as a gro- 
cery warehouse must seem, yet looked like 
the young man at the door — wide awake 
and ready for the week’s work. 

I noted Rob’s deferential greeting and 
heard the young man’s quick, “I looked 
for thee. Thee was at meeting yesterday.” 

“ We drove into town Saturday night — 
twenty-five days out from Boston ! ” 

There was a flash of quick energy in the 
dark eyes of the slender youth. 

“ That ’s it ! ” he declared concisely ; 
“ there ’s nothing can beat the Overland, no 
storms, no wrecks, no losses. Where ’s thy 
manifest ? Drive the wagon around in the 
yard, George ” — to a prentice in the house. 
“ See to the unloading of these goods. 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 31 

Thy returning cargo is already made out. 
Bring thy manifest to the office.” 

Rob, with a nod to me to wait there, fol- 
lowed the quick steps to the rear of the 
store, and I stood still at the open door look- 
ing out. There was enough to amuse the 
dullest. The clerks were coming along 
briskly now. There came the merchants 
with courtly greeting to one another and 
friendly gossip at the corner, the prentice 
lads were running about on early errands, 
wagons were rattling down the street, and 
when I tired of all this I had but to look 
down the short street and see the shining 
water and the far-off sails of those packets 
bound on voyages along the bay. 

By and by, Rob being still busy in the 
warehouse, I wandered down that way to the 
wharf, and watched the sunshine flashing 
from the waves and the circling gulls, and 
then I wandered back again. The sun was 
high now. The street grew hot and stuffy ; 
prentices and clerks and merchants were 
alike busied in the dim dull buildings that 
lined the way. I was tired enough when 
Rob came out, Mr. Hopkins with him. 


32 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

They were speaking of me, I suppose, as 
they crossed the worn floor of the dusky 
warehouse, for the young man came up to 
me and looked at me keenly. 

“ So thee is Tom Marshall’s ward,” he 
said quickly. “Tom Marshall,” he repeated 
thoughtfully. “ Rob tells me he purposes to 
journey South with thee. When ? ” 

The question was put so quickly and so 
point-blank, I stood gaping, looking, doubt- 
less, foolish enough. Finally I found tongue. 

“ I know not,” I began. 

“ See that he goes quickly. Can thee 
frame a desperate homesickness ? ” 

“ I have no home,” I faltered. 

“Ah! I have; thee should see it,” he 
went on most kindly. “ There are many of 
us, and some rare times have we had, spite 
of what folks think of our Quaker train- 
ing. Marshall has visited us. Should he 
still tarry here we might slip down some 
fair day.” 

But his mobile face changed quickly. 
“ Persuade him to leave Baltimore quickly 
— if you can.” He looked questioningly 
at Rob. 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


33 


“ There ’s nothing I could say to move 
him. I never saw him save for the few 
moments when he visited the lad yester- 
night. But why ? ” began Rob curiously. 

“ Has thee seen the 6 Federal Republi- 
can ’ ? ” asked Mr. Hopkins. 

Rob’s gray eyes opened at a question so 
wide the mark. 

“ I read it Saturday night,” I answered 
anxiously. 

“ Hum ! hum ! ” was all Mr. Hopkins 
said for a moment, and then very quickly, 
“ Was thee in the streets Saturday night? 
Did thee see the temper of the people ? 
Marshall has put much money in the paper. 
He is hand and glove with the editor, Han- 
son ; ” and with that and a few kindly words 
to me, Mr. Hopkins was gone. 

The early hours of the day had been so 
quiet that there had been naught to recall 
the angry buzz of the crowds on Saturday 
night, and truth to say, I had well-nigh for- 
gotten them; nor was there anything to 
recall the feverish anxiety I had then felt 
as we walked back up the street to the 
tavern. 


3 


34 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


The hour of noon was not yet come, and 
the routine of business held men’s minds 
chained. So it was during all the afternoon 
whilst I lingered about the inn and yard, 
Rob being busied elsewhere. 

The sales of the cattle had gone briskly 
forward in the forenoon and the yard was 
well-nigh empty, though it would be filled 
again before dark. Yet twilight saw many 
more about the Golden Horse than they who 
bided there. Once more there were angry 
crowds and fierce talk in porch and bar, 
whilst waiters and host hurried about 
anxiously. 

Rob asked him what he made of all 
this. He shook his head ominously, and 
I can well recall how the candle-light 
from the mantle flickered on his bald pate 
while he did so, and he answered he 
knew not. Saturday he thought it but 
a storm soon blown over; it was not. To- 
day men talked fiercer than ever, he feared. 
Why, what were they about? For as if 
by common impulse the porch and office 
were emptied of the men who had gathered 
there. 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


35 


Rob jumped to his feet and I after 
him. We had been lingering over a late 
supper, but the landlord put out a detain- 
ing hand. 

“ Best not,” he counselled. “ Stay quietly 
here ; their affairs are not yours. You know 
not — ” but Rob had seized his beaver (he 
was dressed again in his foppery, and may 
have had some happy idea of the evening’s 
pleasure). “ Tut, man, come along your- 
self,” he cried, “ there may be a fray.” 

“ But the youth,” protested the landlord, 
who showed no signs of deserting his own 
fireplace, piled high with green asparagus 
boughs. 

“ The lad,” began Rob doubtfully, but I 
was already at the door, calling him to come 
on, and Rob looked back laughing. 

“ You see,” he said, and ran after me. 
The crowd was now a square or two away 
down Market Street. We followed it 
quickly, and as we did, so did others. The 
crowd grew and grew, till an angry mob 
filled the street from side to side. Here and 
there it was held back for a space by some 
who tried to calm its passions and argue it 


36 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


into calmness, but it went its clamorous 
way. 

Rob and I were soon in the press. Rob 
had seized the landlord’s thick stick as he 
ran out, and pushing and shouldering he 
made his way, I in his track. In spite of 
all their angry talk, their cries of “ treason,” 
“ traitor,” we had no idea what they were 
bound for till they turned a corner and 
halted and surged about a building with a 
big sign before it. 

The ill-lit streets and the starlight gave 
us no aid for the reading of it, but Rob whis- 
pered to me, “ ’ T is the place where they print 
the ‘ Federal Republican/ ” and even as he 
whispered some hand on the outskirts of the 
crowd flung a stone against the darkened 
window. 

It was as if the mob but waited that 
signal. Stone after stone was hurled 
through the air; the glass fell in showers. 
Some men made their way roughly through 
the crowd; one had a big iron bar in his 
hands. The mob roared, as they worked 
fiercely at the barred door. Many came to 
their aid. The door was shattered; and, 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


37 


standing on our point of vantage on some 
steps across the way, I could see a lantern 
flickering through the shattered windows 
and a score of fierce faces, as another and 
another light showed them the deserted 
office and the presses where the hated 
paper had been printed. 

And then, vengeance within their grasp, 
the mob became orderly. Presses, type, 
paper — all the office presented were thrown 
and piled into the street. Boys came howl- 
ing up with sticks of wood and rubbish they 
had picked up from the street. Some one 
wrenched off the shutters and the shattered 
door. The pile grew, a man struck a spark 
to it from his tinder box, the blaze licked 
up the wood, played round the iron. Soon 
the bright light of its burning flashed up 
above the housetops and reddened the sum- 
mer heavens. 

Boys danced in rings and whooped, while 
grim-faced men fed the fire with everything 
the building held that would burn, and 
more type and forms were hurled into the 
flames. 

I watched with the impersonal feelings 


38 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


of a child. It was but an exciting play at 
which I looked; afterward I was to find 
out how far different it was, how vitally it 
touched me — that bright fire, in the midst 
of the street, ringed about with screaming 
boys and angry visaged men. 


CHAPTER IV. 


B EFORE the embers had died away and 
while the twisted and broken type 
and press yet glowed red, Rob marched me 
off down the street. The fracas was over, 
and there was another matter he must see 
to. At dawn he would leave Baltimore for 
well-nigh two months. 

The crowd was left behind us. Soon I 
could hear the lapping of the water. We 
had turned towards the harbor, then we were 
walking along the street which bordered it, 
and could see the shine of the stars in its 
bosom, as we went quickly along betwixt 
it and the grim, deserted warehouse, till 
we came to a bend in the street, a wider 
way, and dwelling houses. I know how 
it shocked me to look at the peaceful 
houses and to the white porches, which ran 
before the houses with long flights of steps 
at the side, and to see the women sitting 
there and catch snatches of their light talk. 


40 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


Not far down the street Rob ran lightly 
up the stairway of a porch. I followed. I 
saw him go up to the girl who sat there 
alone and lay his hand over hers, where it 
rested on the porch rail, and then, overcome 
with shyness, I sat down on the step. When 
Rob came back there were laughter and 
huskiness both in his voice. 

“ Well, well, lad,” he cried, “ I have 
never served you so ill since your friend put 
you in my care in Boston. Come along 
home to bed ; to-morrow I must away, and 
when I come again to Baltimore you may 
be safe in Georgia. 

“ Marshall will send for you early in the 
morning,” he went on, as we walked briskly 
back along the now quiet street; and it 
was not till Marshall had sent indeed, and 
I was face to face with my father’s young 
friend, that I began to have a glimmering 
of what that bonfire meant for me. 

Had I feared him before, I feared him 
still more now. His face was set and stern 
that Tuesday morn as if it had never known 
a smile, and there were dark rings under 
his blue eyes — eyes that flashed like steel. 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 41 

He had been up all the night before, I 
found. 

“ You saw the bonfire the citizens made 
us last night ? ” he asked shortly. 

I was too awed to do more than nod an 
assent, nor would I have dared for worlds 
to give the slightest inkling of how my 
heart had joyed in the riotous crowd and 
the leaping flames. 

“ They ’ll pay for it and dearly,” he swore. 
“ A land of liberty this — liberty, when a 
man dare not even voice his views without 
being so beset.” 

“I heard my father say — ” I began, when 
the expression of his face, turned suddenly 
towards me, fairly froze the speech upon 
my lips. 

“ Heard your father say,” he repeated in 
a voice he strove to make kind, and I knew 
with quick instinct how hard an effort he 
made at self-control. 

“ That the British,” I stammered — “ that 
this impressment — that if we allowed them 
to search our ships — we lost good sailors 
— and they might afterward dare much 
more — and worse.” 


42 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

“I do not say they are right,” began the 
young man hastily, “ nor that we should 
not fight them. But there ’s truth in what 
Hanson says ; we are totally unprepared.” 

“So were we in the Revolution,” I put 
in boldly. 

“ Hum ! ” half snorted Marshall, as he 
looked at me more searchingly than ever 
before. 

“We fought for liberty then,” he said 
shortly. 

“ And for liberty now ! ” 

“ Tut, lad, the Boston air has affected 
you. Here in the South youth knows how 
to respect — ” 

“ Old age ” For the life of me I could 
not help it, and thereupon he burst out 
laughing. 

“ Still, a man should have liberty,” he 
insisted ; “ liberty to say what he thinks on 
public questions, in a free country, in a re- 
public, governed by the people, with a con- 
stitution allowing equal rights to all — he 
should be free to say what he thinks and 
not to suffer loss therefrom.” 

I was silent. The final assertive way in 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 43 

which he spoke left no chance of reply, 
though I had many ready. For many a long 
hour had I sat and listened to the talk 
concerning this question till I was fairly 
saturated with the enthusiasm of it. I 
longed to tell Marshall things I had heard 
from my father’s lips ; how the Revolution 
had started us on our independence ; how, 
he had asserted, the other countries looked 
not upon us yet with seriousness of our 
rights and privileges which were not fully 
recognized, and for which we were bound 
the more to fight — for a big man may pass 
lightly over an injustice, feeling his own 
strength, while a lesser man must allow no 
infringement on his dignity. And then, 
closer at heart, there were tales of border 
trouble, and tales of those indignities at sea 
which I felt no American could know and 
not grow hot with anger. 

So I felt a bitter disappointment with 
the strong man there, and envied him his 
inches and his years. I knew well how I 
should use them ; and there being no more 
talk, I fell to looking about me. 

We were in the bedroom of the house on 


44 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


Charles Street, where we would now abide 
with the French family newly arrived ; and 
the negro who tended Marshall was unpack- 
ing my belongings and hanging them side 
by side in the roomy closet with Marshall’s 
gay apparelling. 

We would not yet be gone to Georgia, he 
said ; and when the negro left the room, I 
found the reason. Marshall had made 
money on his Western venture — what it 
was I knew not — and much of it had been 
invested in the “ Republican.” His hard- 
earned dollars had gone up in that fire, and 
he was too much of a fighter to leave now. 
However he felt about the war with England, 
there was no questioning the way he felt 
about this riot in Baltimore ; he would make 
the city pay for it, he swore. With their 
police and officials and with the regiment 
formed by its citizens, private property 
should have been respected and individual 
liberty secured. I learned all this strong 
sentiment in the two or three days that 
followed, and then there was some mysteri- 
ous coming and going, and Marshall sud- 
denly went away. 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


45 


I was left to the tender mercies of the 
household, and as I spoke no French and 
they as yet knew little English, I fared 
badly as far as company went, and I fared 
still worse for food. 

Used to the heaped-up plenty of our 
people, I could not understand their careful 
estimate of diet, and when I found a dish free 
enough from garlic and spices to be to my 
liking, I feared to eat enough of it. This, 
too, when the gnawing appetite of boyhood’s 
growth made one feel always as if the three 
meals of our custom should be six. 

Fortunately I had some pocket money, and 
I spent many a shilling about the markets. 
Lexington I liked best of all. It was newly 
built and clean, and the wide stalls piled 
high with baskets of red strawberries or lus- 
cious raspberries or early melons, all set 
about and garnished with flowers, were ir- 
resistible. Nor was that all. Many a fat 
and yellow fowl dangling from an iron hook 
by its poor throat did I become a purchaser 
of. I knew a spot not far from home — or 
the place I then called home — where the 
marsh grasses grew tall and hid a firm nook, 


46 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


an island in the rush-grown and tide-washed 
mud ; and there a lad picked up in the 
street and I forgathered. 

I knew how to make a fire of light sticks 
and thrust the fowl through with one and to 
hold it before the glowing embers, while the 
dripping fat ran down its sides, and the 
smell of it would madden a hungry boy till 
he fell on it and sucked even the bones. 

In the marshes about us, too, many a bird 
might be snared; and when we were tired 
of all that, we might fish from the wharves, 
or, rolling our trousers above our knees, 
could go splashing through the water, forked 
stick in hand, in search of crabs, though 
those I never cared for beyond the catch- 
ing. I could not eat them after watch- 
ing them squirming in the old battered pot 
we tried to cook them in, or after picking 
them out of the fire in which they sprawled 
themselves in their agony and pushing them 
down again to their death. I left the eating 
of them to the other boy, whilst I sat down 
and bravely lectured on all those thoughts 
the fear of Tom had kept me from speak- 
ing ; and we grew both of us so valiant and 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


47 


longed so vehemently for the glorious 
chances of the war — for so I painted them 
— that we began to ponder how the two of 
us could run away to its glories. 

But the war was well away. I brought a 
copy of the “ Daily Advertiser ” now and 
then, and together we pored over some sea 
victory or some border battle, and we be- 
moaned that here we were sea-locked and 
land-locked from it all. 

Those days were few, running scarce a 
fortnight, yet I enjoyed them. It was the 
childish rebound from my agony. 

I appeared punctually at the meals where 
I bided, and judging from the anxious face 
and quick French chatter, the good mother 
wondered sadly that the little American boy 
should eat so little ; and I came promptly in 
to bed, and farther than this none questioned 
me. Not the least happy of my days do I 
count those I foraged in the streets and 
idled on the outskirts of the bustling new 
city, afterward to become so dear to me. 

The days went by quickly till two whole 
weeks were passed. Then one Wednesday 
night I came home tired and happy and 


48 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


mud-incrusted and water-splashed, and stole 
up to my room to clean myself — and there 
stood Marshall. 

He was looking out at the river, and 
though he could glimpse the water running 
red in the sunset and the sight was fair 
enough to chain any man's eyes, yet I knew 
when he turned to greet me that he saw 
naught of it. Nor did he see me — that is, 
save as a person ; he had no eye for mud- 
stained clothes. 

“ Well, Jack," he said, as he shook me by 
the hand — thank heavens, they were clean ; 
I had washed them in the river — “ well, 
Jack, how have you fared ? ” And then at 
my mumbled answer he turned to the win- 
dow, while I hastened to slip from my 
soiled garments. 

When he turned again he eyed me with 
surprise. My face was ruddy with its 
quick rubbing. I could see it in the mirror, 
before which I brushed my thick brown 
hair. 

“Well, well, Baltimore treats you kindly! 
Would it did others likewise." He said little 
else to me, and what was said in that quick 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 49 

French chatter to the household I knew 
not. 

Marshall was away as soon as the meal 
was over, and I likewise was gone into the 
streets. 

The boy I sought was not in any of his 
old haunts. 

Strolling aimlessly back toward home, I 
glimpsed him ; he beckoned me with a quick, 
excited gesture, and then was gone. I fol- 
lowed carelessly. 

It was too near the neighborhood of home 
to feel excitement. I saw standing about 
our doorway and up along the street a 
crowd of boys, whose attention was fixed 
on a house across the way. 

I edged over to them and stood watching, 
though it was long before I knew at what 
they were looking. The houses across the 
way seemed quiet enough ; one of them was 
closely shuttered. 

Before many minutes passed a carriage 
rattled up to it, and a wooden case was 
lifted out and borne quickly within. Pres- 
ently the boys gazed over tall shoulders, 
and men filled up the street, and still the 

4 


50 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


crowd grew and grew, and still was it 
silent. Dusk thickened, yet it made no 
move. 

Presently one of the close-shuttered win- 
dows was flung open and a man leaned out. 
His face was indistinct, but there was no 
mistaking the voice — it was Marshall. 
“ Men,” he cried to the crowd, u we are 
here in the pursuit of our business. The 
< Republican ’ has been printed elsewhere, 
and we are in this house to see to its dis- 
tribution. Any interference with us will 
meet with resistance.” 

He pulled the shutter to, but while it was 
still agape a boy near me threw a stone, 
which broke many of its slats ; another 
banged against the door. Where they came 
from none ever knew. It was as if the very 
streets had been plucked up ; they rattled 
against the house like hail. Some one fired 
from an upper window, a man fell in the mob, 
and then a roar of fierce rage went up. 

The boy I had followed grabbed me as I 
started in the rush of the doomed house, but 
I shook him off. I knew not what prompted 
me, some mad impulse at the thought that 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


51 


the only friend I had here or anywhere — 
and God knows he had been cold enough 
and careless, too — that friend was in 
danger. I fought my way through with 
the wildest of them. I heard the rending of 
my clothes as they were torn from my body. 
I knew there was a cut somewhere, because 
the blood was running into my eyes, and I 
had to wipe it out with the back of my 
hand. 

But when they battered in the door, I was 
there; when they rushed into the hall, I 
was there ; when they strove to force the 
stair, I was in the midst. I heard the 
crack of the pistols from the men who de- 
fended themselves. I saw a man on the 
stairway look about for the space of a sec- 
ond and fall back dead. I heard the groans 
of the wounded, as they were driven back 
by that galling fire from the landing ; and 
as they were driven headlong back I dodged 
from the outskirts, where I hung, and hid 
myself in the recess behind the stairs. 

I heard the howls of the men outside, as 
the dead and wounded were borne in the 
street, and then a quiet — if such it could 


52 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


be called with that ominous low growl from 
many hundred throats forever breaking on 
the ear — settled down. 

There was a cautious footstep on the 
stair, and a man came stealing softly down 
and made shift to close the door, wide 
opened to the street, and then he went up 
again and came, with lighted candle, down 
the stair and in the front room and through 
the hall. He held the candle high, peering 
before him to see if any of the mob should 
be hidden there, and as he came into the 
hall, through a door behind me, the light 
fell on my face. 

Before I could speak he had thrust his 
pistol so close I could feel the cold muzzle 
on my cheek. 

“ Tom ! ” I gasped. 

In all good fortune it was Marshall. His 
face was deadly white, and his fair thick 
hair hung heavy with sweat close to his 
head, but his eyes were shining and his 
mouth was stern and straight set. 

He let the pistol fall and swore roundly 
as he saw me. 

I thought it was because I had dared hide 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


53 


myself there, and began to gasp out some 
excuse, but his stern “ Have they murdered 
you?” showed me what he thought. 

“ No,” said I, and laughed aloud. I think 
it was the first time I ever dared laugh be- 
fore him, and he looked down at me where 
I still crouched, and smiled grimly. 

“ But you must be gone at once ! ” he 
commanded in a moment. 

I looked back at him still smiling, for the 
noise from without was fiercer for the mo- 
ment, and I heard the click of his teeth, as 
he set them together at the sound. 

He sighed heavily as he turned to me. 
“ You must come upstairs,” and he led me 
by the arm, as he went back into the kitchen 
and looked to the doors and windows, and 
came once more into the hall. The door 
had indeed been shut, but it was strained 
and weak; their defence must be made from 
the stairway. 

One of the men, pistol in hand, was al- 
ready posted there, and questioned Marshall 
sternly as I followed him, but Marshall put 
him aside and went on into a small room, 
hot and stifling and full of men. 


54 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


Marshall put down the candle on the nar* 
row mantle-shelf, and the light flickered on 
the set and desperate faces of some thirty 
men. He told them briefly of the state of 
the house. 

“Gentlemen,” said a man near him, as 
soon as he had finished, “ it is now prudence 
to look to our safety. Hear me for a mo- 
ment.’ ’ He raised his hand to quell the 
murmur that instantly broke out, and the 
barrel of the pistol he still held gleamed 
in the light. “ For the present the mob is 
quieted and afraid. We can disperse from 
the rear of the house, one by one, and so 
reach safety.” 

Oaths and exclamations drowned his 
voice. There was a cry, “ They’ve had 
enough ! ” and another, “ They ’ll leave us, 
they ’ll dare no more ! ” but in the pauses of 
the boastful speech came the low rumbling 
of the drum-beat. 

“ The militia at last ! ” said some one 
scornfully. 

“ That is no drummer’s beat,” cried one 
wdiose experienced ear told him a different 
tale. “ It is a citizen,” he exclaimed with 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 55 

quick positiveness ; “they are gathering — ” 
his sentence remained unfinished, but each 
man finished it in thought. I did, I know, 
though I dreamed of nothing so dreadful as 
that which did come as ending. 

The drum-beat went on ; we could hear it 
up and down the street. The men talked 
low and earnestly among themselves. From 
my dark corner in the hall I could catch 
naught save snatches of their talk. 

Presently Marshall came out. I could 
see him look about him, dazed by the 
darkness. 

“ Tom,” I whispered softly, and he turned 
my way and caught me by the hand. 

“ Lad ” — he had caught the word from 
Rob — “ you should be safe at home. You 
heard what the general said ; you might yet 
escape.” 

I was obstinately silent. 

“We purpose to send some of our mem- 
bers out to their friends for assistance,” he 
went on eagerly. “You can accompany 
them.” 

Still I made no answer. 

“ Should I go myself — ” 


56 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


A quick pressure of my hand, which he 
still grasped, answered him. 

“ Ah, but I cannot ! ” he said, with a 
sharp drawing of his breath. “ I will not ! 
I came here in the peaceable discharge of 
my duties. We have harmed no one ; we 
have come but to our honest work. Our 
papers are printed; we have come to dis- 
tribute them.” 

“ But why should you wish to ? ” I began 
weakly. 

“ Because it is our right ! ” Marshall’s 
voice was intense if low, for all were near 
us, the men in the room, the sentinel at 
the top of the stairs. “ Because no man 
has power to interfere with that right ! ” 

“ But they have,” I put in. 

Marshall dropped my hand impatiently, 
but I caught his arm. 

“ Oh, Tom,” I cried, “ what would I do 
if you — ” I choked and could not finish. 

“ And I had not even thought,” he mut- 
tered. “ Poor lad.” He put his hand on 
my shoulder and pushed me to the narrow 
stairs leading to the attic, and made me 
sit there while he sat by my side. 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


57 


“ I had not thought ! I had not 
thought ! ” He left me for a moment or 
two and came back with a bit of paper in 
his hands. 

“ Here is a rude scrawl. If aught should 
befall me, take it to Mr. Hopkins. He is 
young and has a kindly heart, and despite 
his youth has much influence. ,, 

And then we two were silent, sitting 
there on the narrow dark stair. The 
desperate men whose fortunes were our 
own held eager counsel a few feet away. 
The sentinel stood stern and alert, gazing 
down into the candle-lit hall ; but Marshall 
lingered with me and comforted me, and 
gave me, now and then, broken words of 
counsel. Finally some one called him. 

It was about three in the morning. Some 
faint coolness was making itself felt in the 
stifling close-shut house, some faint lighting 
was showing itself, and soon we must look 
for evil things. A mob, which had grown 
all the night, as the sounds proved it to 
have done, was not one to disperse with 
the morning light and the means to work 
its vengeance. Yet when the dreaded 


58 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


moment came, I had little knowledge 
of it. 

I was worn and racked with excitement, 
and sore and painful from the bruises I 
had got unknowingly when they rushed the 
house, with me in the midst of them. I 
was faint from watching, and touched to the 
heart with the gentle words I had never 
thought Marshall could frame. I was unfit 
to see it save as an evil, reeling dream — 
that renewed roaring and rushing of the 
mob, the showering stones and pattering 
bullets, the broken door again forced open, 
and then, commanding words and a parley. 

A soldier in the hall called for truce, 
commanded the mob back, and came up 
the stairway. There was heated talk, much 
dissension ; the soldier went down and re- 
turned, and I, who was with Tom now in 
the room, heard his courteous words and 
promises. He would take us under guard 
to jail. 

“ To jail ? ” cried a man I knew to be Mr. 
Hanson. u To jail for what ? For protect- 
ing my house and property from those who 
assailed both for three hours, without being 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


59 


fired upon, when we could have killed num- 
bers of them. You cannot protect us in 
jail or after we are in jail.” 

The soldier appealed to the general. 
They went out together, came back ; once 
more the soldier spoke. They should be 
taken safely to jail for 'protection , their 
house and furniture should be guarded, the 
militia would be about them on the way 
thither, and they should be kept from the 
mob. My heart bounded with joy — Marshall 
was safe. 


CHAPTER V. 


W E marched down the stairway, twenty 
of us. Broken and wrecked furni- 
ture was all I saw in the house, chairs 
dashed to pieces, doors shattered from their 
hinges, banisters wrenched from the rail, 
and I looked at it idly and impersonally. 

To the very door of the house an escort 
had been drawn, and in the centre of the 
body of soldiers we were borne away. I 
dared not leave the men had I wanted. I 
knew it was more than my life was worth 
to venture beyond that protecting fringe of 
guns. I could see nothing but the set faces 
of the guarded handful of men and the blue 
coats about them and the blue sky above. 

Once I glimpsed, as the soldiers closed 
about us in the street, a frightened face 
looking through a half-opened shutter. It 
was our French hostess, who may have 
recalled some such scenes in her own streets 
of Paris, — scenes from which she had fled 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


61 


and doubtless dreamed herself secure, but 
here she looked down upon them once more 
in America, the land of liberty to which she 
and hers had fled for safety. 

Our land of liberty jailed us for the day. 

No sooner were we well within the grim 
building, safely shut in a strong inner room, 
than I threw myself upon the brick floor 
and was sound asleep. I slept for hours. 
When I wakened, the sun, which had been 
shining in the other side when I entered, 
shone full on my face, and a fly was tick- 
ling my nose. I brushed it angrily away, 
and rolled over to go to sleep. But it 
was Marshall who had wakened me, and 
he shook me again. I looked up in his 
blue eyes, which were half sorrowful, half 
amused. 

“ Such is the happy privilege of youth/’ 
he said to some one by him, “to forget 
everything in slumber. He is as bright 
and fresh now — ” 

I started briskly to my feet, but fell back 
groaning. “ What is it ? ” asked Marshall 
anxiously. 

Again I essayed and stood upright, but 


62 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


the soreness and pain of my body! I 
stretched myself one way and then another, 
and at last fully awake, became aware of 
my surroundings. The men with whom I 
had marched thither were close about us, 
but if there had been any hope in their 
faces then, there was nothing but desperate 
resolve now. I could make naught of it. 
There were others with them likewise, and 
there had been food and drink. Seizing 
the pitcher, I turned it to my mouth. The 
water was warm and slack, but I was 
fairly crazed with thirst, and the sight of 
a crust of bread gripped me with hunger. 
There was no time for satisfying it then. 
Marshall drew me again aside into the 
corner where I had slept, and there was 
Mr. Hopkins with him. 

One or two men, brave and fearless of 
their own hurt, had ventured to visit the 
jailed men and take counsel with them, and 
Marshall had made desperate endeavors to 
reach Mr. Hopkins. He had come. What- 
ever Tom wished to say to him was already 
said ; he now but commanded me to go with 
him. 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


63 


“ And you ? ” I burst out. 

Tom’s blue eyes flashed, and then for an 
instant his eyelids drooped, but only for an 
instant ; he looked back at me calm and 
steadfast. 

“ Mr. Hopkins will prove your good 
friend,” was all he said, yet my heart turned 
heavier within me than in all the terrors 
of the night before. 

There was no time for farewells or fore- 
bodings. Mr. Hopkins bade me come with 
him and quickly, and giving me no time for 
questionings, went rapidly out through the 
crowd of men, along the bare corridor, down 
a flight of stairs, and out into the bright 
hot sunlight of the street. 

He hurried me through the mob which 
crowded it and surged angrily back and 
forth, to his own house some six or eight 
squares away, and there he bade me eat and 
wash, and go again to sleep, and on no 
account to leave the house. He himself 
went out at once. I know he went to move 
heaven and earth to rescue the men in the 
city jail. 

As for me, the first of these two I obeyed 


64 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


strictly. I ate first , ravishly. I threw aside 
my tattered, blood-stained coat. I washed. 
The cut on my head was excruciatingly sore, 
and the housekeeper would have me rub it 
with some ointment made of fat and balsam. 
And then I watched my chance. 

I was again in the street. The mob ruled 
it. Dwelling houses were close shuttered, 
stores were tightly fastened. Had there 
been any order or business in the city that 
day, there was no sign of it now. As I 
wedged and elbowed through the rushing 
crowd, I heard what made my blood run 
cold ; and there was not a face I knew, not 
a soul to aid me. I heard the plans of the 
mob; they were known all over the city. 
The rioters but waited the night and the 
darkness to rush the jail and put every 
man there to the most dreadful death their 
fiendish minds could think of. Where was 
that soldier ? Where were his promises ? 
Where were the men who had guarded us to 
jail ? I wandered up and down, once as far 
as the wharf. There I saw one face I knew 
— the Captain who had befriended and 
amused me on my first Sabbath in Balti- 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


65 


more. His vessel, a small sloop, lay at the 
wharf, and I found it was this in which 
Marshall had made his journey ; his baggage 
lay in the cabin. 

Nothing surprised me now, not even the 
sight of these belongings of his here where 
I least expected them. The Captain knew 
where he was ; and together, elbowing and 
pushing and often hurt, we found our way 
back near the jail. There was no guard 
there, no hint of resistance. The lawless 
men seemed to know there was naught be- 
tween them and their fiendish deed. 

I would have glued myself to the jail 
steps and waited what they would do, but 
the Captain would not let me, and dragged 
me away with him. 

Darkness fell over the city, the lamp- 
lighters were hustled from their ladders, 
and far above, the gleam of the stars shone 
faint and distant from that crowded street, 
as if the hope and justice of which they 
ever shine the signal were blotted out. 

The Captain dragged me by main force 
from the jail. 

“ The boy is sick, he has been hurt/’ he 

5 


66 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


explained to some of the roughs who eyed 
us curiously, and in the angle of a bake- 
shop window, where he landed me, he be- 
rated me roundly. 

Did I wish to be torn limb from limb? 
Had I not sense enough to know what would 
befall me? Come away to his vessel; he 
would make me safe in his cabin. And at 
last, seeing he could do nothing with me on 
that tack, and wondering, doubtless, what he 
could do with a stout boy resisting him 
tooth and nail in the mob, he tried another. 

There might be some chance of help. 
Would I not be man enough to wait and see 
what could be done ? And that braced me 
firmly. I set my shoulders in the angle 
between the window and the wall, and 
clinched my hands within my pockets, and 
so I waited. 

Hour after hour went by, or so it seemed 
to me, — hours of raging pandemonium. 
Through many perils have I since been, like 
one who wrote in holy writ “ in journeyings 
often, in perils of water, in weariness and 
painfulness, in hunger and thirst,” yet the 
most dreadful dream that ever agonizes a 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


67 


midnight moment is some far-off thrilling 
memory, sending its message through the 
night, and I am once more a boy, pressed 
against the wall, with hell raging around 
me, and the only friend the world then 
held. 

Toward the hour of midnight there was a 
tramp of soldierly feet heard above all the 
din. It was the militia forming around the 
corner ; and the Captain, though he dared 
not speak his thoughts, looked back at me 
and nodded hopefully. I knew his meaning. 
The militia could have cleared the street in 
half an hour. I waited breathless, then 
came a wild cheering. That soldier who 
guarded us to jail had come down and dis- 
persed — the militia. 

The mob knew the doomed men were 
given up to them. Ere the cheering was 
done they charged upon the jail. I rushed 
forward. The Captain thrust me back. 

“ Keep where you are ! ” he commanded 
me hoarsely ; and then, as he was a man of 
little stature and could not see above the 
heads of the crowd, he looked for some 
point of vantage. 


68 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

“ Here ” — he pointed to the wood-work 
about the window — “ climb up.” 

He steadied my legs with his muscular 
arm against them. “ Now tell me what you 
see.” 

But I could only gasp. A man, raining 
quick blows right and left, rushed down the 
steps, which were all alight with the flare 
of torches the mob carried to light them in 
their fiendish work. Blow after blow fell 
upon him ; one who had stolen behind him 
felled him with a great billet of wood ; some 
one kicked him as he fell and sent him roll- 
ing down the steps ; another kicked him high 
in the air, and he fell to the pavement. 

“ He is dead ! ” they shouted. 

“ Who is it ? ” breathed the Captain 
hoarsely. 

“ Hanson, I think,” I muttered ; but I 
was trembling so I scarcely could hold my- 
self erect. 

“ Steady ! steady ! Look for Marshall ! ” 

“ Here comes another,” cried the mob, 
with such foul words I will not write 
them. 

Twenty men against all these raging 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 69 

devils, that fought and kicked and beat 
them and threw them in a heap of dead in 
the street ! 

Last of all, I saw Marshall. He was on 
the steps ; every vestige of clothing was torn 
from his body. His face was stained with 
blood, and yet he fought like a tiger. 

I said no word to the Captain, but sprang 
almost over his head. He caught me. We 
forced ourselves forward to where in the 
street the victims lay, while the blood- 
thirsty rioters still howled for vengeance 
and cruelty. Some would leave them now 
they were dead, others swore they still 
lived. A man, bearing a lighted candle, 
leaned above the white and rigid face of 
one of them and pulled up the closed lids 
and dropped the seething grease upon the 
eyeball. Another with a fiendish laugh 
prodded the stiffened limbs with a great 
pin. Some were for throwing them all at 
once into the Falls which ran hard by, 
others for cutting their throats, and so be 
sure of them. 

Now we had fought our way to the very 
centre, and there, his bare back gleaming 


70 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


in the torchlight, lay Marshall. I knew his 
fair head, bared against the cobble-stones, 
and the Captain, at the risk of his life stood, 
over him. 

“ What would you do ? Have you not 
murdered them ? Have you not done your 
worst ? Are you heathens ? ” 

The mob turned on us. For a moment I 
thought we would share Tom’s fate — he 
and I together, for we stood side by side — 
for one frantic moment, and then rose hue 
and cry ; some of the victims had escaped. 
Scarce half the twenty lay there in that fell 
pile. With shrieks and cries of rage, the 
crowd turned, and without a moment’s wait 
we seized Tom between us. Some saw us, 
but one dead man counted not when there 
were living ones to hurt, and we bore him 
the few feet to the shadow of the jail and 
there we laid him down, but only to get the 
weight of him better between us. 

“ If we can’t get him away now,” swore 
the Captain, “ we ’re done for as well as 
him, if they catch us.” 

The Captain lifted him by the shoulders, 
and I, according to my strength, by his feet. 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


71 


We slipped and slid down the clay gullies 
to the Falls, and once we fell, but we got 
him somehow to the brink of the stream 
and to a hovel built there for God knows 
what purpose ; it was a heavenly place of 
refuge then. 

We could see nothing inside, there was 
no window and the door we shut after us ; 
and we laid Tom down as tenderly as we 
could, and felt about the rough boards of 
the floor to see if there were aught to harm 
him. 

Then the Captain felt all over his body, 
and, putting his head down to his chest, lis- 
tened long and intently. He lifted an arm ; 
it fell back lifeless against the hard floor. 

“He is yet warm,” he muttered. “It 
may be a deep trance, we cannot tell.” 

He opened the door and looked out, and 
the sound of the hoarse cries and the 
trampling of feet that was borne to us on 
the night winds made me shiver as if with 
an ague fit. 

“ Zounds ! ” swore the Captain, “ ’t is no 
time to turn coward now ! ” His voice was 
clear and vibrant with decision. “ You 


72 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


must stay here ; no one will find you. ’T is 
the only chance of getting him away. Even 
if he is dead, we cannot leave him. I will 
steal along the Falls to the wharf ; my yawl 
is riding astern my vessel. I will come 
back. Boats on the water at night are 
too frequent to be noticed/ * 

He told his plan plainly, speaking, I 
think, partly to explain to me, partly to 
reassure himself; and as soon as he had 
spoken, waiting no word from me, but 
with stern caution to make no sound, he 
slipped away. 

I could hear the crunch of his steps 
on the beach below, and then, as it died 
away, a very agony of fear beset me. I 
laid my head down by Tom’s, — there was 
no stiffness nor coolness of the body to 
frighten me, — and I shook from head 
to foot, though I made no sound. So 
afraid was I that I should cry aloud that 
I tore my sleeve from my arm and thrust 
the pieces into my mouth, and waited more 
rigid than the prone figure by my side, 
save when the shivers of horror and fear 
shook me from head to foot. It seemed 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


73 


I had lain thus for hours when the blessed 
sound of oars in rowlocks was heard above 
the din of the rioters in the street above, 
and soon a cautious hand was at the door. 

Together we got Marshall into the boat. 
We laid him in the bottom, and flung a 
big coat, the Captain thought to bring, 
over him, for we must pass under the 
bridge at Market Street, and no curious 
eye must discern the freight we bore ; and 
we got safely away to the sloop and climbed 
up the dark side and laid Tom in the cabin. 

The Captain’s men were all ashore. He 
dared not wait and he dared not seek them. 
He threw off the ropes himself, and then the 
tide being at its ebb, he let the vessel drift 
off, while he and I made shift to set the 
sails. 

The morning breezes blew us far down 
past the fort below the town, and past the 
tree-clad bluffs of Anne Arundel, and then, 
before they were out of sight, there fell a 
calm. 

Long before this we had seen to Tom. 
It was but a long trance, the Captain had 
declared, and while he held the wheel he 


74 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


had called down into the cabin to me and 
told me how to wash the great welts and 
bruises on his back, and the mud and filth 
from his poor face, and to cleanse the thick 
hair from the dirt and clotted blood; and 
while I was doing this, to moisten his lips 
again and again with brandy, till the first 
sign of his unconsciousness was gone. As 
the sun and heat shimmered from wave and 
deck, we opened doors and hatches, and 
then had thought of our own wants. 

The Captain told me where food could be 
found, and we ate ravenously; and then I 
tumbled down upon the deck and in the 
shadow of the sail sank into slumber almost 
as deep as Tom’s trance. When I awoke 
there was a gray darkness over water and 
sky. I thought it was the dawn, and turned 
me for another sleep ; then I saw the white 
deck and the big flapping sail, and I knew 
where I was. I called the Captain, who had 
been nodding at the wheel. He stretched 
himself lazily, as I had done, but was wide 
awake the instant he had noted the thick 
atmosphere. 

Overhead the clouds were closing us in, 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


75 


so that we could scarcely see the land. The 
Captain sprang to his sail and called me to 
hold the wheel ; and while the ominous calm 
still hung over us, he reefed the sails and 
ran to the cabin to look at Marshall. We 
felt we could brave any danger after the 
joy of what he saw there, for Marshall was 
breathing softly and regularly, and was 
asleep. The Captain battened down the 
hatches, and we waited the storm. 

I was a landsman. My childhood had 
seen nothing of the great deep and the 
ships, save an idle loitering about wharves 
in Boston and in Baltimore. I could do 
naught in the awful night that followed 
save obey the Captain, who dared not leave 
his wheel. I ran hither and thither. Now 
and then I looked at Tom, who slept the 
sleep of utter exhaustion — mayhap worse 
— in the cabin. 

I crouched on the deck near the Captain, 
and dodged the waves as they broke now on 
this side, now on that, as the vessel heeled in 
her flying. The clouds seemed to rest upon 
the very waters, and the blackness shut us 
in as in a wall. There was no lightning to 


76 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


show us where we drove, nothing but howl- 
ing, screaming wind, and, by and by, cut- 
ting hail and lashing rain. 

We were out in the bay we saw, when we 
left North Point behind us, and the wind 
which blew out of the north blew us straight 
down the Chesapeake. Of our bearings that 
was all the Captain knew. 

I crept closer to him from where I 
crouched. 

“ Will we be drowned ? ” I asked trem- 
blingly. It was some time before I heard 
his answer, and I knew from the tone of 
his voice how manfully he was fighting for 
our lives. He even strove to speak cheer- 
fully. 

“ Ay, there ’s many a storm I ’ve seen 
worse, mayhap.” And then in the pause of 
the wind : “ Down the Indies now — this is 
well-nigh like them — a hurricane — now if 
I had — but here we are — we must do what 
we can — go down and see Marshall ! ” 

I stumbled down the stairs. Sight was 
impossible. I felt his regular breathing 
and crept up again, but the wind that had 
blown me straight down the steps blew me 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


77 


sidewise as I came up, so suddenly had it 
shifted. The vessel gave one great lunge. 
So far over she went I thought her broken 
mast was pointed downwards and her keel 
was in the air, but she righted with decks 
awash and water pouring down cabin and 
hatchway. The cold douche roused Tom, 
and he called feebly. The Captain halloed 
loudly back. 

“ We have you safe away, but a great 
storm has struck us. You must get on deck. 
Jack will help you.” 

I was already getting my arm about him 
and trying to lift him on his feet, and we 
stumbled and groped the few steps up the 
stairs and there we fell, both of us. We 
managed somehow to get close to the Cap- 
tain and then to wait the end, for end we 
knew it would be. 

No living thing, no vessel, however stout, 
could stand the awful wind and waves. 
Yet the end came quicker and far differ- 
ently from anything we thought, or the Cap- 
tain may have thought. For myself I scarce 
had sensibility left. 

The vessel had been driven landward and 


78 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


drove bows on a sand bank, then swung 
violently sidewise. The force of the strik- 
ing threw us all, as she careened, into the 
water ; and without a hope I went down, 
my arm still about Marshall. 

We rose. Something dragged me by the 
hair and pulled me upright. It was the 
Captain, who gave a great cry of joy as he 
caught me. My feet touched the bottom 
and the waves rolled but over my shoulder. 

“ Where is Marshall ? ” shouted the Cap- 
tain. We had come up together. Thank 
heaven the final blow had found us so close, 
else Marshall and I had gone down forever 
in sheer helplessness, but the Captain had 
struck out and struck bottom. 

He got hold of Marshall. We waded 
through water ever shallower and shallower 
in the direction the Captain’s instinct led 
him, and once more stood on firm land. 


CHAPTER VI. 


I T was not till dawn that we could form 
any idea of where we were. The storm 
went down with the breaking of the day, 
and the gray light dawning through the 
wreck of clouds showed that we were far 
in the curve of a wide, deep bay or harbor, 
on either side of which were fair fields and 
twice, at least, the shine of red chimney 
tops. But while the sight of houses prom- 
ised future aid, for the present we were in a 
plight to try the sternest. 

Marshall lay half unconscious on the sand, 
and showed scarce more of life than when 
we had borne him, hidden in our boat, to the 
vessel. For myself, I was so sore and stiff 
that my flesh felt like one big bruise, and 
my muscles as if they were hot and knotted 
cords. The Captain was the only one of us 
with strength or sense left in him. 

At the earliest light he started eagerly off 
to see where we were, and what aid could 


80 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


be got, while I crouched by Marshall, 
watching him. 

He came back in a scant half-hour, long 
faced and chapfallen. 

“ Where do you think we are ? ” he de- 
manded, when he came up to us ; but I only 
stared at him vacantly. “ On an island ! ” 
He swore a good round oath. “ Shipwrecked 
on an island here in the Chesapeake, as if it 
were in the Pacific ! ” 

I suppose my countenance must have 
showed some scare or flicker of hope dying 
out, for he made haste to add, pointing to 
the houses, showing clearer in the growing 
light : “ They T1 come soon enough ; that 
will draw them.” He looked sadly out to 
the vessel, heeled over on the bar. 

“ There is a race of water between us and 
the land, a good two hundred yards across 
and deep enough to float a ship.” But 
good sailor as he was, and used to facing 
and overcoming emergencies, he gave over, 
grumbling. 

“ There is a cabin on the bluff above us,” 
he said more cheerfully. “ The chimney is 
gone and the door, too, but there is a dry 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 81 

corner, and we had best try and get him 
there.” 

For the third time, then, we bore Marshall 
between us, slipping and sliding as we made 
shift to climb the bluff, and, on my part, 
groaning likewise. 

All about the cabin door was wet as the 
sand outside, but far back near the big 
hearth was dry, though not overclean, and 
here we laid him. 

He was so deadly cold the Captain thought 
that, spite the July sun which would soon 
be blazing outside, I had best find some 
driftwood ; and with the aid of the Captain's 
tinder-box we started a blaze on the hearth, 
and, chafing and rubbing Marshall, brought 
him back to some signs of life. 

When the faint color began to show in 
his face, and his flesh to grow warm, and 
the dampness of the cabin began to yield to 
the cheering blaze, we took some thought 
of ourselves. 

The Captain stood up from where he had 
been kneeling by Tom, chafing wrists and 
ankles and hands and feet, and looked about 
him grimly. 


6 


82 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


“ Good God!” he said softly, and my 
glance followed his as he looked from the 
dirty rotted floor to the rough, cobwebbed 
rafters overhead, from the small window, 
gaping paneless, to the door storm-shaken 
from its hinges. 

Then he went outside. When he came 
back he was stripped to his hairy chest, 
and spite of all our misfortunes, he was 
chuckling. 

“ Zounds ! ” he cried, “ I have signalled 
in regular shipwreck fashion. I ’ve tied 
my shirt to the top of the tallest pole I 
could find and stuck it up at the edge of 
the bluff. Some one will be here soon, else 
I am a duffer ! We must have help soon.” 
He glanced anxiously at Marshall. “We 
have n’t saved him twice to — now — Just 
keep a lookout ! ” he called cheerily, “ and, 
lad, dry yourself by the fire or take a turn 
outside. You are like a mop. You are 
dripping all over Marshall.” 

He pulled me to my feet and gave me a 
push to the bright sunshine, now flooding 
the world outside ; but the first thing I did 
when I had blinked my eyes to see in the 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


83 


dazzling light of sun and gleaming sand was 
to search either shore, and my veins ran hot 
with joy when I could make out a group of 
men on the nearer side hurrying down to 
the beach. Nor did my joy suffer any 
abatement, for spite of the waves still run- 
ning wild and high, they lost no time in 
pushing out a boat and making sail. 

I ran with the news to the Captain, and 
together we waited them eagerly. As the 
boat came nearer I could make out two 
blacks at the oars and in the stern a man 
with a fine, frank face — a man who looked 
every inch a gentleman. And such he 
proved to us. Before the boat was grounded 
he was calling out anxious questions. By 
the time he gripped our hands he was offer- 
ing us his hospitality, and saying that we 
should go back with him instantly. And 
then the Captain told him of Marshall, say- 
ing only that he was ill and unconscious. 

“But the more need that we take him 
instantly where he can receive attention,” 
declared Mr. Rousby, for so he had already 
named himself to us ; and he told us like- 
wise that the house shining so fairly now 


84 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


on the slope of meadowland running down 
to the water was Rousby Hall. I had heard 
mention of it in Baltimore ; it was known 
for its hospitality and for one other thing I 
was to remember later, the pretty daughters 
of its household. 

Mr. Rousby would see Marshall at once 
and try the effect of the strong flask he had 
offered to the Captain as soon as he landed. 
We soon had him, with its help, restored to 
consciousness ; but when he turned, cough- 
ing and spluttering from the draught we 
had forced down his throat, and opened 
his eyes and saw us and the stranger, he 
turned again and flung his arm above his 
head. His poor, bare, bruised back was 
toward us. 

Mr. Rousby swore roundly. “What is 
this ? ” he demanded. 

“ He was beaten about much in the cabin 
by the storm,” said the Captain, fearful to 
tell what part he had played in the riot ; 
and Mr. Rousby, though he looked far from 
believing or satisfied, must fain accept the 
flimsy reason. 

I had gone around and knelt by Tom, and 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


85 


he called me now softly. I started with joy 
at the sound of his whisper. “ Send them 
away/’ he begged ; and somehow by many 
tricks of expression and gesture I passed 
the hint to the Captain, who made some 
talk about his shipwrecked vessel and went 
outside. 

Tom looked up at once, and the intelli- 
gence of his look and the gleam of the old- 
time spirit in his face fairly set me beside 
myself with joy. 

“Who is it ?” he asked, still whispering. 

“ Mr. Rousby,” I went on eagerly. “We 
are on an island ; his place is not far off 
across the river — Rousby Hall, you know.” 
Tom’s eyes were still questioning. “ You 
remember last night, the storm, the ship- 
wreck of our boat ? ” He nodded his head. 
“We are near there; he is going to take 
us all to his home — ” 

“Never!” cried Tom; and then he fell 
back, and I thought he had fainted and was 
about to cry for help, when he opened his 
eyes and looked at me. “ I will never go ! 
Tell them so ! ” he said shortly, and buried 
his head again in his bare arm. 


86 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


So I told the Captain, and he went in 
the cabin and came out again, wonder 
and anger fighting on his blunt, open 
countenance. 

“ I fear,” he blundered to Mr. Rousby, 
“ the young man is scarcely fit to be 
moved — ” 

“ He is certainly not fit to stay here — ” 

“He — he is feverish — ” The Captain 
clung to the word. “ He is feverish,” he 
repeated with emphasis. “ Sick people 
have strange fancies.” 

“ Which should not be humored ! ” 

“ Nay, I have heard the doctor say oft — ” 

“ Doctor be damned ! ” 

The Captain softly scratched his head, 
where the tousled hair clung salt and dank. 

“ I scarce know — ” 

Mr. Rousby turned and strode to the 
cabin, and the Captain looked at him and 
looked at me, and at the negroes waiting in 
the boat, and then away to the fair home 
across the water. Clearly the puzzle was 
too much for him, and he left it to our 
would-be host. 

He came back soon, Mr. Rousby did, with 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 87 

an expression as much like the Captain’s as 
his fine features could wear. 

“ I would advise we take him up bodily.” 

The Captain shook his head. 

“ Then what can be done ? ” Mr. Rousby 
swore easily and gentlemanly. “ Look at 
you,” he went on, “ and this boy.” The 
Captain looked down at his hairy arms and 
chest, and turned red as a guilty schoolboy. 
I really believe he had forgotten his shirt 
flapping in the air. As for me, my dried 
and hardened clothes cut into my bruised 
flesh, and I was suddenly conscious of all 
the soreness and stiffness the excitement 
had made me forget. 

“ Look at you on this island, and that 
hut ! I would not shelter my pigs there ; 
and a sick man! And here am I — ” he 
stopped impatiently. Language could really 
not fit all he felt. 

“ Could you not send us — ” began the 
Captain. 

“ Send ! And what good would that do ? 
He needs care, sir, care.” 

But spite of Mr. Rousby’s choler and im- 
patience, so he decided. He would return 


88 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


and bring us such necessities as we stood 
in immediate need of. We felt we dare not 
force Marshall. 

Once more we watched the boat, rocking 
over the big waves. Tom was so obsti- 
nately silent, and had so sternly bade us let 
him be, that we had obeyed, and gone out 
on the sands and set us down to dry in the 
hot sunshine and to watch the boat. We 
saw the bustle on the opposite shore, the 
coming and going of burdened slaves, and 
then the white sails set again island-wards. 

What stores were in that boat ! First 
there was food — chicken and white bread 
and wine and ham and cold pone and fresh 
ripe peaches. 

How I remembered my aching emptiness 
as I seized the food and made first for Tom ; 
but he would not even turn his face, and 
swore at me as I begged him to eat, and 
told him in glowing words how delicious 
was the food. 

And then I sat down on the hearth near 
him; I had no thought of cruelty, and 
ate all my hands held — a fat baked fowl 
and brown biscuits and soft sweet peaches ; 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


89 


and I rose up and went out and felt once 
more what I was — a boy with an in- 
satiable appetite for food and for adven- 
ture. Both were at hand. I could have 
whistled. 


CHAPTER VII. 


I WENT down to the beach. Mr. Rousby, 
his good-nature restored now that there 
was something to do and he was command- 
ing the doing of it, stood ordering the slaves 
about their work. 

“ Sam, lay that feather bed there, where 
the sand is dry, sir ; and the tick — put it 
there by it ! Get out those forked sap- 
lings ! ” I grinned at the absurdity of the 
beds brought over in a boat, and wondered 
what the forked sticks could be for. 

“ If you will go up with them,” Mr. 
Rousby turned to the Captain, “and see 
that they go easily, they are so heedless, 
confound them ! Let them fix the bed 
without any noise or confusion, and once we 
make that sick man comfortable perhaps 
he ’ll have a glimmering of sense.” 

The negroes picked up the bed ticks, and 
I stood looking idly on, but Mr. Rousby had 
a command ready for me. 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


91 


“Here, sir, put yourself to some use; 
carry those saplings up.” And then Mr. 
Rousby, having given every man something 
to do, followed empty handed and leisurely. 

I scrambled up the bluff with my queer 
burden. The negroes took them from me, 
and in a trice they were put in place. The 
forked sticks were set up, poles were laid 
across them and thrust into the interstices 
of the logs forming the wall, other poles 
were laid across these, and on went tick of 
straw and tick of feathers; clean sheets 
were whipped over them, and there, with a 
pillow for his head, we laid Marshall. 

“ There is an excellent spring hard by — ” 

“I found it ! ” I interrupted. 

“ Then perhaps,” he finished, looking at 
the Captain, “ you had best bathe the 
bruises of that young man. A little whiskey 
and water now ; there are other things to 
be brought up.” 

He left us to the tendance of Marshall, 
who kept his obstinate fit and would let us 
do little for him ; and while we strove to do 
that little the negroes brought in the ham- 
per of food and a willow woven basket. I 


92 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


peeped under the lid, and saw candles and 
white home-made soap and towels and 
plates and mugs of pewter. 

When all was placed in order the negroes 
went sailing homeward. The Captain and 
I were mayhap dismayed to see them push 
off and leave Mr. Rousby on the wide beach, 
shouting orders after them. He was so 
much the dignified gentleman, so much the 
commander, and I don’t believe we wanted 
to be commanded. 

Yet he did so wisely and for our good. 
That night we were ordered to sleep while 
he kept watch. He looked somewhat rueful 
as he remembered for the first time that all 
his care had been for the sick man, and we 
lacked all comforts for sleeping. Not that 
it mattered a whit to us. The ground out- 
side the door was warm and sun-dried, and 
the Captain wished no better bed ; but I 
elected to sleep within. 

Not till I stretched out in the darkest 
corner did I know what excitement had run 
riot in my veins and kept me from the sore- 
ness, the stiffness, the weariness, that now 
came upon me. My head rang and rang 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


93 


when I closed my eyes. A feeling I scarce 
knew how to describe save as a bath of hot 
prickly sand ran from head to foot, and 
should sleep be almost upon me I seemed 
to be rolling down vast precipices and strug- 
gling in gulfing waves, till with jumping mus- 
cles and jerking nerves I was wide awake. 

I took to watching Mr. Rousby where he 
sat. The candle from the rude chimney 
shelf threw a faint flicker about him. He 
had no more comfortable resting-place than 
a wave-washed and sun-dried log which had 
been rolled inside, and yet he sat as easily 
and leaned against the rough wall as lightly 
as if it had been the softest chair of his 
Hall. 

Katydids were shrilling outside and the 
frogs were croaking loudly in the marsh, 
and through the open door I could see the 
luminous gleam of summer stars. It was 
a midsummer’s night, soft and mild; who 
could have thought the terror and storm 
and shipwreck not twenty-four hours past ? 
And looking at the gleaming stars, slowly 
my head grew clear of sick fancies, my 
limbs ceased their twitching. I was asleep. 


94 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


Our new friend and benefactor looked 
pale and worn when I had aroused enough 
to know aught besides my own feelings, 
and there was much trouble in his face. 
Poor Tom had been raging with fever, and 
had been delirious in the night ; and being 
so he must have told his tale to the watcher’s 
ears. 

We found now why Mr. Rousby had 
fallen in with our humor and not over-ridden 
us all, as he seemed likeliest to do, and 
carried Tom off at once. He knew not the 
sickness, and feared it for his household. 
But he knew and guessed aright now, and 
knowing, gave his counsel. 

“’Twas just as well that he lay hidden 
here for the nonce ; he should lack no kind- 
ness, no attention ; ” and his deeds amply 
fulfilled the promise of his word. 

The wretched cabin was soon made clean 
and habitable, and we were so provided 
with food we had to call a protest, while 
everything that could be done was done for 
Tom. 

A week went by thus, a week of nursing 
as careful as we knew, of long, slow watch- 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


95 


ings by the bed where Marshall lay like 
a log or, what was worse, moaned restlessly 
and muttered broken words ; a week of 
loiterings by the shore and watching the 
white sails of the canoe that came each 
day, with always the same slaves to guide 
it, so that our secret could be the better 
kept, and with everything we could need 
or wish. 

Now two weeks were gone, and the fever 
died away, and Tom began to creep slowly 
back to life. 

Meanwhile came news from without, both 
good and bad. 

The tide of feeling had turned in Balti- 
more. Many of its citizens were hot with 
indignation that such disgraceful scenes had 
stained their city. “ Niles’ Register,” voic- 
ing their horror, had printed scathing de- 
nunciations of the mayor, and the officer 
who should have guarded us with his regi- 
ment, but had instead ordered their dispersal 
— so far good. 

Then came the bad. They were of Brit- 
ish victories, of close blockade and embargo. 
It was scarce known what sailing could be 


96 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


made out of the Chesapeake, and all this 
came to Tom’s ears, when by and by he was 
able to creep out in the sunshine of early 
morn or in the cool twilight ; and as 
strength came back to him and clear 
reason, he must have thought much of our 
condition. 

But now that I have gotten thus far on 
my tale I must creep like a crab backwards. 
When the heavy winds and tides had died 
down after our shipwreck, there came a day 
when the whole deep curve of water back 
of which lay our island ran shimmering in 
the summer calm like a sheet of glass — no, 
no sheet of glass could ever look like that. 
There the wide harbor lay like burnished 
silver, with great stretches of purple and 
waving breadths of blue along its motionless 
expanse ; the shimmer of summer heat rose 
above it and made the encircling land pur- 
plish and hazy ; and far off, where harbor 
and bay met and the Chesapeake stretched 
across to the peninsula on the other side, 
there was naught visible save glittering 
water. It might have been the wide At- 
lantic. 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


97 


On such a day as this when the tide had 
run far out, leaving great stretches of bare 
sand and mud, while Mr. Rousby kept watch 
by Tom’s lethargic sleep, the Captain and I 
pulled out to the shipwrecked vessel. She 
had righted a little, so that the deck stood 
not quite so straight up and down, and we 
managed to clamber on board and the 
Captain to get into the cabin. The water 
there was breast high on him; it would 
have been head high on me, so I must needs 
wait outside and hold on to the cabin top 
and peer into the depths and shout en- 
couragement to the Captain, who fished 
about for his belongings and for Tom’s, and 
we hailed with clamorous joy each thing 
that could be found and carried to the boat 
and dried on the sands. 

Many a trip we made backward and for- 
ward, and many an hour of idleness we 
varied by strolling out to turn and change 
the drying things and then to store them in 
our cabin loft. So it came about that the 
Captain had clothes enough and so had Tom 
when he could don them; but I went lack- 
ing till Mr. Rousby, won, no doubt, by pity 

7 


98 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


of my rags and dirt, brought me apparel 
from the stores provided for his slaves. 
Nor did I look with favor on such attire. 
I was used to going decently clad. Still, 
for rolling in the sand and wading knee 
deep in the water, for the life of those sum- 
mer days, it sufficed. 

It was our journeyings to the vessel that 
put it into the mind of the Captain that she 
might be saved ; so as Tom was slowly get- 
ting well and bothering over our poor affairs, 
the Captain was revolving his. By and by 
the thought of both bore fruit. 

Perhaps it was the presence in the har- 
bor of a big vessel, such as sometimes 
came in behind the curving bar of land for 
night and shelter, and lifted their sails and 
were away at glimmer of dawn, that brought 
them to the climax of speech. At any rate, 
I remembered the day well. 

It had been hot and languorous till the 
long scarlet lights of sunset gleamed on sky 
and water, and the evening breeze began to 
blow. We went out on the bluff before the 
cabin to cool our heated bodies in the salt 
wind that came straight across the bay ; and 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


99 


as we sat there on the green, wiry grass, the 
water softly lapping the shore on the beach 
beneath us, the sea-gulls and the black-heads 
screaming about us, the Captain put a ques- 
tion to Marshall boldly and bluntly. 

“ Why don’t you go over to Rousby Hall 
and stay now ? ” 

I was lying flat on my stomach, watching 
a gull skimming the waves in search of sup- 
per, when he spoke, and I wriggled over 
and looked at Tom. His face, fairer than 
ever from his long illness, flushed from 
square chin to broad forehead, and it was 
some moments before he replied, then it 
was stiffly. 

“ I like staying here ! ” 

“ Here ! ” The Captain laughed. “ Well, 
you can’t stay here always ! ” He fell 
silent, and the great vessel out near the 
harbor’s mouth glided into her place and 
lowered her sails. 

Then the Captain spoke shortly, but with 
much rough kindness. He could linger no 
longer, he said ; Marshall was well recovered, 
or rather waited but the slow coming of his 
strength. The vessel there, shipwrecked on 


L.oFC. 


100 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


the sands, meant much of his wealth. She 
could be pumped of water, he thought, 
calked, refitted and made good for service. 
Not that he knew what to do with her then, 
no man could tell when she could glide 
again into West Indian harbor, but he could 
not leave her there ; and Tom, seeing his 
drift, seconded him warmly. 

It was but right he should do so, and then 
he thanked the Captain till he squirmed, 
and praised me till I turned again flat on 
my face ; but I noted after all — for I was 
most curious to know what we would do — 
that there was not a word, not even a 
whisper as to his plans. Only the Captain 
must be gone at once, and I should go with 
him to the big vessel out there and see if 
they could help him. 

Have I said that Mr. Rousby left us 
a boat? We ran it, now, off the sands, 
and the Captain, with two stout oars — he 
would not let me touch them, I caught too 
many “ crabs* ’ for him — pulled away on 
his two-mile row. The red was gone from 
sky and water, and the sea-gulls were abed 
ere we reached there. 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 101 

That was the beginning of the Captain’s 
making ready to go, and soon he and the 
vessel that had lain sidewise to the sands 
were a part of our daily life no longer. 

Mr. Rousby and the neighbor from the 
other side of the curving land had been 
oft to visit us, but we had ceased to subsist 
on Mr. Rousby’s bounty. Tom at the point 
of a quarrel had bought from him certain 
stores, and he and I made great shift at 
cookery, though now and then came a 
great hamper from one side or the other. 
Daily living was much like a long picnic 
to me. 

Now my good skill at spitting fowls 
before open fires served me in good stead. 
The beach was lined with driftwood, and 
never shall I forget the delight of the 
gathering it at early dawn and starting 
a fire on the bluff before the cabin, and 
blowing it and coaxing it till it flared high 
in the still air and then died to glowing 
embers. Then, mayhap, I was ready with 
fish fresh caught to broil before it, and 
corn-cakes for the smoking skillet; and, 
when they were done, brown and crisp, 


102 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

and Tom and I on the grass were eating 
them, and the harbor was reddening like 
a great jewel with the sunshine and the 
tide lapped softly below — it was heaven 
to me, long pent in towns and longing 
eagerly for free life and fresh air. 

But I wondered why Tom did it. 

Now I know. Much of his money had 
been lost. He knew not where to turn 
for his next venture, he knew not what 
chances and changes the war might bring 
about, he knew himself weak and broken, 
and he felt there was nothing so good for 
his healing as the quiet monotony of our 
days lived in the strong salt air. And 
so he waited. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


ND I gloried! Ducks could be shot 



jLjl from the point yonder, the water 
teemed with fish of the finest, and when 
the tide ran low there were oysters for the 
picking and soft-shell clams or maninoses 
for the digging. 

I played and foraged, sailed and swam 
and waded, and would have cooked six 
meals a day had not Tom held to some 
form of convention. Thus on the sunny 
days — but now and then came a rainy 
day when we must keep within the cabin 
and strive to make a fire in the broken, 
draughty chimney, and I choked and sput- 
tered with smoke and said bad words 
under my breath which I dared not let 
Tom hear, while I scuffled with the cook- 
ing. 

On such a day Tom would sit at the 
little window, his face pitiably thin and 
white, his fair hair dry and deadened from 


104 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

the fever, his eyes big and wistful, turned 
often toward Rousby Hall, and a look there 
I could not read. 

I, too, would look that way, though I 
could see nothing save long lines of rain 
stinging into the gray sullen water and 
falling bleakly on the long meadow slope 
between the water and the sloping roof 
and chimney tops of the Hall. Sometimes 
we could see figures moving about the paths 
and porches, — the slaves, Mr. Rousby, 
so I judged them; and sometimes when 
the day was fine there was a gleam of 
white, a flitting of graceful figures, and I 
remembered the daughters who graced the 
household. 

We had never gone thither. Marshall 
had been several times in our little boat, 
but the bow was never turned across the 
river. Mr. Rousby had grown irascible 
over it, and once when he was leaving us 
he said sharply : “ The womenkind of my 

household speak of visiting you, sir. I 
would have them wait till you pay your 
respects properly, but they — they look 
upon you as a hero.” 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


105 


Tom flushed uneasily. Doubtless his ad- 
ventures savored little of the heroic to him. 

“ A hero,” emphasized Mr. Rousby, “ and 
they would fain see your habitation on the 
island. ’T is a romance that wins the woman’s 
heart ever ! ” And after that I noticed 
how often Tom turned his looks Hall-ward, 
and how often he made furtive investiga- 
tions of his rescued clothing. Truth to say, 
his clothing was not so sorry-looking as 
one might have looked for. Tightly folded 
in his mails, they were not altogether water- 
soaked, and the Captain and I had done our 
best for them while he lay on the cabin’s bed. 

His apparel looked after, he sent many 
an anxious glance landward ; yet for days 
we saw only the fishermen’s boats and 
the shining water and screaming sea-fowls. 
Then, one sunny morning, when the wind 
was brisk and the waves ran white-capped, 
and there was a tingle in the air that set 
one’s veins athrill, we saw a flutter of white- 
clad figures along the meadow slope from 
the Hall, a lifting of canoe sails — and Tom 
fled cabin-ward. He resented strongly my 
grin when he emerged therefrom. 


106 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


“ Gad ! ” he fell upon me angrily, “ you 
look like — you look like — ” There was 
a blaze in his blue eyes such as I had not 
seen since we left Baltimore, and I was an- 
gered to the core by his tone and was about 
to turn haughtily away when he caught me 
by the shoulder. 

“ Tut, lad, come ! Nay, I will beg your 
pardon humbly. I did not think, I had 
forgot; but that dress suits illy to stand 
before ladies.” 

“ Then I ’ll not be seen of them,” I cried, 
still sore and angered, and bitterly aware of 
my nankeen trousers and round jacket and 
coarse shirt and bare feet. 

“ But you must ! They are come to see 
the hero .” His voice took on a sarcastic 
tinge. “ You are the only one, since the Cap- 
tain has left. You cannot disappoint them.” 
And for fear I should escape, as I surely 
should have done, he would not let me out 
of his sight. 

He had judged me aright. One look at 
his own apparel of green broadcloth, his 
long silk vest, and coat cut from the waist 
and showing his shapely limbs, on which the 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


107 


trousers sat somewhat loosely, owing to his 
illness, one look at them and his high stock 
and wide-brimmed beaver, he had spent 
many hours in smoothing, was sufficient to 
make me feel the awkwardness of my own 
ill-fitting, slave-patterned clothes ; and I 
waited but a chance to hide myself in 
marsh or loft, but such chance he never 
gave me. The canoe came skimming nearer 
and nearer. The wind was in her favor, 
and the canoe straight set to the island. 
Soon Tom was gallantly waiting, hat in 
hand, soon the bow grounded in the sand, 
and the boat was a blur of bright faces 
and wide skirts and rumpled ruffles. 

“ You would not visit us,” cried one 
gaily, though her eyes were keen and 
searching, and her cheeks went from red to 
white as she looked Tom from head to 
foot. “ You would not visit us, and so — and 
so” — she ended her speech with a little 
nervous laugh and waved her hand toward 
her sisters ; and then she stepped sedately 
ashore, minding her voluminous skirts care- 
fully. The others followed her, and she be- 
gan, as they stood there on the sands, to 


108 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

introduce him shyly and prettily. Never 
had I heard a word from Tom as to his ac- 
quaintance with the daughters of the Hall, 
but now she went on : “ This is Rosalind,” 
to a dimple-cheeked girl nearest her, “ and 
this is Jane,” to a girl more serious -faced 
and dark-eyed, “and this, sir,” she touched 
herself lightly in the breast just where the 
ruffles of her bodice met and crossed, “ this 
is Miss Elizabeth Rousby ! ” 

I saw a look of keen reproach in Tom’s 
eyes, while the sisters chorused, “ Bess ! 
Bess ! ” and broke into ripples of laughter, 
from no cause that I could see, unless it was 
I, who stood awkwardly digging my bare 
feet into the sand. “ Truth, I thought it 
necessary,” she continued mercilessly ; “you 
would neither visit us nor be my father’s 
guest. Mayhap you had forgot those days 
in Baltimore, but a country maid has a 
truer memory ; she is not so distraught.” 

I heard not Tom’s protest. The young 
ladies seized upon me, and after one dizzy 
moment when the world seemed shut in by 
a horizon of billowy skirts and laughing 
faces, I suddenly found my poise and was a 







JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


109 


most willing captive. We went flocking up 
the path our feet had already worn in the 
bluff and over to the cabin. 

There were shrieks and cries of laughter 
as they peered into all our shifts of house- 
keeping, for they were pirates, truly, and 
for the nonce the fortress and its in-dwellers 
were theirs. 

Some laughed and cast sidelong glances 
at the bed. Perhaps it was lumpy and badly 
spread, for suddenly I became aware of two 
hollows beneath the ill-smoothed covers 
— one big, where Tom slept nightly, and 
another which would fit my smaller figure. 
And they looked at the pewter plates on the 
rude mantle-shelf, and I thanked heaven I 
had scrubbed them each day with sand, and 
that though somewhat scratched thereby, 
they still shone brightly. 

Somehow, without a word from them 
that was not either jest or praise, I knew 
the floor was dirty, even if well swept ; that 
there were ashes on the hearth and that 
stones were not good andirons; that the 
window should have its full complement of 
glass, and that there should be better seats to 


110 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

offer than a log, be it ever so smoothed and 
silvered with sun and waves. 

Tom, I suppose, was making his peace. 
When we had straggled around the island 
and seen how near the tide cut it in two 
behind the cabin, when we had gone quite 
to the far side and watched the race of 
water between us and the mainland, when 
we had come back along the wide beach of 
the other way and once more to the bluff, 
we found the sister who had named herself 
Elizabeth ordering the slaves about the big 
hamper they had brought, “ to picnic with 
us,” they said, and Tom was standing near, 
trying to help, but hopelessly. The sisters 
fell to, and with chatter and bustle and 
laughter forwarded the feast. 

I had forgotten long ago my naked feet, 
and tanned face and hands, and long, rough 
hair, and ill-fitting clothes much like the 
negroes’ who waited on us. No thought of 
further consciousness marred that day, and 
had it done so, one look at Marshall would 
have brought my joy again to its full tide. 
His cheeks were flushed and healthily so, 
his eyes full and bright and brimful of 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. Ill 

happiness, and the tone of his voice was no 
longer listless, but clear and ringing. 

We watched the canoe sail homeward 
with its crew of pretty pirates, so they had 
dubbed themselves once I had used the word 
in jest ; and then while the sunset glow was 
on our fair harbor and on our island, we 
turned to climb the bluff and stood for a 
space looking at each other. 

“ Jack ! ” cried Marshall, with a laugh it 
did me good to hear. “ Jack, what was ever 
your favorite book ? ” 

And I flashed back, quick as thought, 
“ Robinson Crusoe ! ” Whereat he laughed 
again. 


CHAPTER IX. 


J ACK,” Tom asked me the next day, 
“ Jack, do you not think — ” he stam- 
mered a little, most unlike his usual de- 
cisiveness — “ do you not think we had 
best furbish up a bit, there ’s company 
now — ” 

“ I should say so/’ I broke in. “ Yester- 
day those young ladies saw everything.” 
Tom squirmed on the log where he sat. 
“ There wasn’t a chair to offer them,” I 
went on mercilessly, “nor a table in the 
room, nor a platter.” 

“We never missed them before,” said 
Tom; and then he added whimsically, “Well 
so it is the pioneer West never misses the 
comforts of civilization till a petticoat’s 
rustle tells the tale.” 

There was no suggestion I could make. 
I was too heedless even to have thought of 
our lack, save for the bright eyes and 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 113 

gay laughter that had pricked me into 
sensibility. 

“Well, we must see Mr. Rousby,” de- 
cided Tom finally. “ Perhaps he will hire 
a slave to us.” 

Which he did willingly. Though it had 
come to busy days on the plantation, there 
was no hint of refusal ; and a few days’ 
work put us more ship-shape. The roofing 
was repaired, the floor relaid and properly 
cleaned, the chimney rebuilt, the door was 
better hung ; a ladder from within was 
fitted to the loft, a rude shelter was built 
before the door, and later on some other 
comforts found their way thither. There 
was a carpet of home weaving, laid mysteri- 
ously one day while we were dining at the 
Hall, some chairs with comfortable flag 
seats, and a table and a proper bedstead. 

That day when we came back from the 
Hall the island seemed for the first time 
home-like. We grounded our boat on the 
beach and pulled her far up from the ris- 
ing tide, and climbed the bluff in the slowly 
thickening dusk; and when our cabin loomed 
before us, I for one felt a thrill of joy. 

8 


114 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


And when we went to the door and pulled 
the latch-string, our only fastening, and 
Tom struck his flint and tinder and lighted 
a candle, he himself uttered an exclamation 
of pleasure. The rag carpet looked luxuri- 
ous, the hearth was reddened a brilliant 
hue, and andirons winked on the hearth. 

“ Gad ! ” he exclaimed softly, “ the fairies 
have been at work.” 

“ Big and black ones,” said I, laughing. 
“ That was what Mrs. Rousby was about, 
sending Betsy off, and laughing and whisper- 
ing when I went into her chamber.” 

“ Aye, but it is proper and fine,” said Tom 
complacently, “and many a man in the 
countries where I have been would think it 
as fine — as fine — ” 

“ As we do the Hall,” I interrupted, for 
spite of my growing shyness of the laugh- 
ing and jesting of the young women there, 
the wide well-furnished hall and stately 
rooms and well-kept grounds were a keen 
pleasure to me whenever I saw them. 

“ And now, Jack,” went on Tom briskly, 
“we must hire a black to wait on us, to 
cook and clean. He could sleep in the loft.” 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


115 


“ I won’t have him.” 

“ Won’t, indeed ?” Tom flushed angrily. 

“ Forever hanging about us and spying 
upon us, and telling all we do when he goes 
home to the Hall.” 

“ There are other slaves besides Mr. 
Rousby’s,” and then he added very stiffly, 
“ There is naught of which we need be 
ashamed.” 

“ He ’d find a plenty to tell, whether 
there was or not. I want to do as I 
please.” 

“ Well, you do it ! ” 

“ And have nobody hanging around.” 
It would have spoiled the glamour of those 
days had we abated one whit the freedom 
of our living ; and I was so wordy, and 
rebelled so strenuously, that Tom gave in, 
and we held to our old way. 

Another converse we had, too — Tom 
and I. It was one of the chilly wet days 
in midsummer when the blazing of the 
drift log on the hearth was a comfort to 
which we drew close, while fog and mist 
drifted by outside. 

" Jack,” said Tom, as we sat about it, our 


116 


JACK AND IIIS ISLAND. 


supper done, and the darkness closing early 
about the harbor and the water running 
stilly under the mist-pall, “ Jack, we must 
write to your lawyer in Georgia.” 

Now I felt somehow as if the very talk 
of this jarred upon my happy carelessness. 

“ I don't see why you should/’ I said 
shortly. 

“ Because I am your guardian, boy, and 
he must know of your whereabouts. All 
sorts of tales are rife in such troubled times. 
He must hear of you and know what to do.” 

“ You can write yourself, then,” I insisted, 
my surliness still holding. 

“ So I will, and bid him look well to your 
affairs while we are imprisoned here.” 

“ Imprisoned ! ” I blazed. 

“It irks me,” went on my guardian, 
though I seldom thought of him now save 
as friend and companion, “ that you should 
be cut off from all instruction.” 

I made an impatient exclamation. 

“It should be otherwise. Your father 
would have had you at school.” 

“ Tom,” I cried, “ I have done nothing 
but study all my life, study and travel and 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 117 

everywhere study , and my father — ” I 
stopped abruptly. I could not speak of him 
even yet. 

“ Aye, it was a pale-faced boy I saw first 
at the Golden Horse, and now you are as 
ruddy as a farmer.’’ 

The strong, invigorating air and fine out- 
of-door life were more than tonic to me. I 
felt myself growing, as the corn grows on a 
dewy summer’s night. 

“ Well, there is nothing we can do to 
better it. War-times are hard times gener- 
ally. But it will not be forever ; you must 
make up the time you have lost some day.” 

I felt too indignant at such speech for an- 
swer. But Tom went on earnestly : “ It 
is not as I would have it, lad, and when the 
day comes I will see to it that your father’s 
wishes are fulfilled. He was a scholarly 
man.” 

Tom’s words had started some uneasy 
thought of my own affairs. 

“ Tom,” said I suddenly, “I left some 
money with that French woman in Balti- 
more.” 

“ The deuce you did ! ” 


118 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


“ I never carried it all about me, and 
when I ” — I stopped lamely. There 
needed no words to say when and how I 
left. “ Perhaps Mr. Rousby can get it for me 
when he goes next to town. Perhaps, and 
some clothing likewise ; ” and then we said 
nothing more. What we had said had 
spoiled our evening by rankling memories. 

Still, altogether, it seemed for a time as 
if the trammels I delighted in being free 
from were about to close about us, but it 
was only for a time. These things being 
done, the days went by as before, save that 
we were more comfortable and more so- 
ciable. We went often to the Hall, and we 
went sometimes to the house of our new 
neighbor and new friend, on the lower curve 
of the harbor — Mr. Wilson. 

But while I am talking thus minutely of 
our affairs, I must say this — Tom bought 
the island. He bought it of Mr. Rousby, 
who, beginning by wanting to do all for us 
and coming oft to the point of open rupture 
with Marshall about it, had found out and 
accepted Tom’s proud independence, and was 
now willing to transact with him the slender 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


119 


business necessary to our living. I have 
not space to talk of that now, nor of how 
Tom husbanded his slender stock of money, 
nor of the details of our life, delightful as 
they seem when I look back on them. 
Mayhap by some slight reference now and 
then I may show a shadow of them, but 
now, first of all, we must have a name for 
our island. Tom was for giving it some 
title, long and high sounding. 

“ Pshaw/’ said I, when he named them to 
me ; “ call it Sandy Isle, for that ’s what it 
is ! ” And so it became, and so it is to-day. 

Second, we became quite suddenly the 
fashion of the country-side, or water-side, 
for scarce a house in the region showed its 
chimney-top beyond the water’s gleam. We 
were beset with invitations. 

Doubtless Mr. Rousby had spoken a good 
word for us, for there came hither those of 
Point Patience, of St. Gerards, of Preston 
Manor and Preston Heights, and many 
others. 

We went to stately dinings and house 
gatherings; we went shooting, deer-stalk- 
ing, or fox-hunting. The war had not come 


120 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


very closely to them. We alone so far had 
suffered, if that were suffering. 

Now and then the men held fiery talk ; 
some were loud against the heavy taxes 
Congress laid to meet the burdens of the 
war, and some were wildly patriotic and 
made the news of victory by land and sea 
the occasion of feasting and celebrating at 
home. 

But for the main, the talk was of planta- 
tion and neighborhood affairs, of the high 
prices of tea and coffee, and rum and mo- 
lasses, and — what touched them always 
and was the secret undercurrent of their 
anxiety — the wide waters of the bay, their 
easy highway for the enemy, and the danger 
of those who dwelt thereon. 

When they talked on such themes, I 
watched Marshall closely and furtively, and 
listened for his words. I knew his early 
opposition. I knew his defence of the “ Re- 
publican’s ” strenuous articles. I looked to 
see if he would voice any sentiment now, 
changed or obstinate, but he was obstinate 
only in his silence. And it became a sore 
thing to me. 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 121 

As the rumors of the war came thicker 
and nearer, I was itching to be up and in 
the thick of it, but all around me were 
inactive. 

“Mr. Rousby,” I asked that gentleman 
one day, when we were dining at his house, 
“ when next you send to Baltimore, will 
you not see — will you not procure a gun 
for me ? ” 

“ Bless my soul ! ” he cried, as he stopped 
short in the hall, his guests passing him to 
the porch. “ Bless my soul ! What do 
you want with it ? ” 

“ I want it for hunting,” I answered 
boldly. “ What will it cost ? ” 

He named the sum and I felt in my 
purse. I had brought it, trusting to have 
this word. “ I have ever lent a gun when 
there was need of one,” he said, while I still 
fumbled for my money. 

“ I thank you,” I rejoined with utmost 
politeness, “ but I wish one of my own.” 

The old gentleman — he seemed old in my 
eyes, though he was in the very prime of 
vigor — took the money, eying me sharply 
the while. “I send to town within the 


122 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

week,” he told me after a second’s silence. 
“ I will see it is attended to. I have 
another such request.” He was smiling 
shrewdly as he moved away. “ It is from 
Marshall,” he called over his shoulder, as he 
hurried to join the others in the porch. 

When, chafing against being idle here — 
it was the only thought I had ever against 
the island — I asked Tom of it, his answer 
was snapped out quick and sharp : 

“ You’ll see enough of war, and you ’ll see 
it here. Look at this harbor ! ’T would float 
the British fleet. With Washington so near 
and Baltimore above us, there ’ll be fighting 
enough.” And with this prophecy in my 
ears, I went away dreaming of valiant 
deeds, and then forgot them all in the 
pleasure of the days. 

The languor of summer was gone, the 
early mornings and short evenings were 
sharp and chilly ; there was often a fire 
now upon our hearth, and Tom said we 
must be making ready for winter. That 
meant gathering up the driftwood and pil- 
ing it in the shadow of our chimney, and 
rare foraging from the mainland. 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


123 


My forebears had been planters in the 
New World for two generations, and they 
had been gentlemen farmers in the Old for 
I know not how many. Mayhap the sur- 
vival of their instinct taught me the keen 
delight of hoarding, or, in our Southern 
parlance, “ providing.” Even now, though 
within a stone’s throw of one of the world’s 
best markets, as our Lexington market has 
become, when the autumn days come on 
I feel a restless desire to stock cellar and 
larder, to gather stores of flour and meal, 
and hang the rafters with meat, and fill the 
bins with potatoes and apples, and stock 
the pantry with jars of lard and barrels 
of sugar — and then take mine ease with 
mind and body well content. 

So many a day while Marshall had gone 
visiting I pushed my canoe up the river or 
creek and, landing where I would, sought 
for chestnuts or walnuts or purple haws or 
even, sometimes, persimmons, though they 
were not yet come to their full ripeness and 
mellowness. 

On such a day, we started at early morn, 
when the autumn mist had barely lifted 


124 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


from river and harbor, and hung a faint, 
impalpable veil over curving mainland and 
distant bay, and the bright sun was already 
warming the chilled earth and air ; when 
the hoar frost showed faintly on the bend- 
ing grass and on our gray cabin roof, and 
when the wild ducks and sea-gulls were still 
clamoring for their breakfast out on the 
fringes of our island — on such a day we 
started off. 

On the Wilson side of the mainland we 
had but to cross the river and we could 
follow the curving beach for miles away to 
the pine-covered point jutting into the bay ; 
but Rousby Hall, though nearer, was cut 
off from the land close to our island by a 
wide meandering creek, so that to reach it 
we must either sail directly across, which 
was our usual way, or else cross to the 
other side of the creek and walk the half 
mile over the fields. 

To-day we were going directly over. 
There was a fox-hunt in progress, the scent 
would lay on the frosty earth some hour or 
two longer, and Tom and I were both to 
ride a hunter from the stables of the Hall. 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 125 

But halfway there I changed my mind. I 
would not go on the hunt. I said nothing 
of my mood to Tom, but kept the canoe 
straight skimming on her course. 

They had been watching for us, for out 
from the porch came the whole laughing 
bevy, the young ladies tripping along the 
path, holding up their long skirts daintily, 
and the men, who had already joined them, 
escorting them with gallant air. The blush- 
ing cheeks and half-veiled eyes were as 
bewitching as the morn — but not to me. 
It pleased my mischievous humor to watch 
Tom’s irate expression as Mistress Bess, 
a gallant by her side, came nearer. 

“ Halloo,” he called to Tom, “ we but 
waited you ! ” 

“ I thank you ! ” said Marshall coldly, as 
he lifted his hat to the party. 

“ Your horses are already saddled,” called 
one. “ And the hounds — hear them ! ” 
as they came baying along the path. 

Tom sprang ashore, and poor Mistress 
Bess’ cheeks flushed guiltily at his greet- 
ing. To hide her confusion she moved 
nearer me. 


126 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

“ Good-morning, Jack,” she murmured, 
as she stood on the wet sand as near as the 
tide would let her. “ You are to ride the bay 
mare to-day ; ’t is the fastest horse in the 
stable save one.” She glanced shyly at 
Marshall, who was talking gaily, not heed- 
ing her. 

Now Mistress Bess had a warm spot 
in my heart; her bright cheeks and shy, 
sweet eyes were more winning by far 
than her sister’s livelier ways, and I was 
angered at Tom for her distress. I had 
meant to sail away with no word of ex- 
planation, but now I called him, “ Tom ! ” 
and waited until he came to know what 
I wanted. 

“ I shall not ride to-day,” I said, when he 
was by her side. 

“ Why, what ’s the matter ? ” 

“ Not ride ! ” 

I had done what I cared to do, they stood 
side by side, separated from the rest, so I 
gave the boat a shove out into the water 
and caught the sail to turn it about. “ Not 
to-day ! ” I called back, laughing, and was 
away. 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


127 


The morning was too delicious to spend 
in a crowd, even if it should be a fox-hunt ; 
and I sailed back islandward, and then 
turned the boat up the creek — St. John’s 
they called it. 

The tiny inlets at its mouth were tree cov- 
ered, and the leaves of maple and oak and 
hickory and poplar were scarlet and bronze 
and yellow, and shone like a giant posy 
between silvered water and deep blue sky ; 
and the trees upon the headlands, which 
were of an unlooked-for boldness, were 
clad in every color the frost- king could 
paint. 

By and by, the creek growing narrow and 
the winds between the high lands fitful and 
gusty, I lowered my sail and took to my 
oars. The land narrowed upon the silver 
thread on which I journeyed, the strip of 
sandy beach was gone, pine and under- 
growth came quite down to the water-side, 
and where the undergrowth was slight and 
the purple asters bloomed I could look far 
away through the woodland and watch the 
sunlight sifting through the tree-tops and 
the gay leaves drifting downward. 


128 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


All me, liow fair it was ! I slipped my 
oars softly ; it was sin to be noisy in this 
sylvan silence, and drifted with bare head 
and light, delighted breath. Squirrels were 
chattering and whisking their bushy tails 
about the branches, and they were the only 
living thing I saw save the crows and the 
ever-present water-fowls. 

I landed where the pine needles carpeted 
the shore, and filled my hands full — why 
I know not, I had thought myself neither 
soft nor sentimental — with clusters of the 
pale purple, starry flowers and with branches 
of the dogwood glowing red and scarlet 
fronds of sumach, and piled them in the 
boat’s bow; and then tying her safely, I 
wandered inland. 

It was a long, delicious day. I lay down 
on the crisp leaves when I liked, and laughed 
when others, down falling, pattered on my 
up-turned face. I got up and wandered on 
when fancy dictated. I found a bush of 
purple haws and ate till I wanted no more. 
I filled my pockets with chestnuts, lying 
gleaming on browning leaves; and then 
coming upon a tree of thin-shelled hickory 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


129 


nuts, I pulled off my jacket and tied the 
sleeves at the wrist and filled them ; then, 
slowly and leisurely, I went back to my 
boat. 

The sun was high now, at noon mark, 
and blistering hot as it struck back from the 
water. The coolness of our cabin was most 
pleasant when I reached it, and I took my 
store of shell-barks to the loft, much as a 
squirrel would have taken his to his hollow, 
and with the same happy consciousness. 

I lit a fire on the hearth and cooked my 
dinner ; and then, my softened mood being 
gone and noting we had but a brace of 
fowl hanging under the shelter outside the 
door, I took down my gun — Mr. Rousby 
had been faithful to his promise — from its 
peg-rack over the mantle, where it hung be- 
low Marshall’s, and went down to the point 
to watch for ducks. 

When I came back I could see a party of 
men and women walking along the beach 
from Rousby Hall; and Tom, seeing my 
figure outlined against the bluff, waved his 
handkerchief. I knew the signal and rowed 
over for him. 


130 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

“ Have you had a happy day ? ” whis- 
pered Mistress Bess when I had reached 
the other side, and they were quizzing me 
for running off. 

I nodded. 

“ So have I,” she whispered. 


CHAPTER X. 


S OMETIMES when Tom was gone galli- 
vanting I would sail to the other side 
of the harbor to the Wilson’s homestead. 
There was not an equal stateliness there, 
but a heartiness and cheer I liked most cor- 
dially ; and there was a fleckled-faced, blue- 
eyed, tomboy girl nigh to my own years, 
and some brothers likewise. Now of the 
boys’ companionship — lumpish lads they 
were — I felt no need. The close comrade- 
ship in which Tom and I lived and in which 
I had lived in earlier years with my father 
shut me off from most boyish friendships — 
but Susie ! 

It may be that I went the oftener be- 
cause I never knew the mood I ’d find her 
in. Mayhap I’d find her busied in the 
kitchen, her skirts kilted about her, her 
round arms, where a freckle showed now 
and then like a spot of pale gold upon the 


132 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


fairness of her skin, bared; and then she 
would scarcely notice me. 

“ I ’m busied, Master Jack. I ’m mixing 
the dumplings for the beef roasting before 
the fire!” 

Truth, the savory odors of it would be 
most vexingly appetizing. 

By and by, as I would be standing still in 
the deep doorway, scarce knowing what to 
say or do and showing it, doubtless, in every 
line of face and figure, she would relent. “ If 
you bide to dinner, you may try them ; and 
afterwards/' glancing quickly under her 
long fair lashes to see if I were duly grate- 
ful, “ we might have a ride." 

Then when the dinner was finished we 
would wander off to the pasture, and, catch- 
ing our horses, would mount bareback and 
go racing along the wide, firm beach or down 
the lane to the “ big road ” of the county. 
But that was rutty and ofttimes, as the 
winter grew apace, impassable, whilst the 
beach was ever firm and white and glisten- 
ing ; there was our race-course. Some- 
times I won and sometimes she, according 
to the beast we strode, for we rode alike, 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


133 


and it was that which made the ladies of 
the Hall dub her a tomboy, and wonder why 
her mother did not keep her more restrained 
and ladylike. 

Some such talk as this had made me less 
inclined to go with Tom on his jauntings 
thither. I know when one of them — Jane, 
the serious and dark-eyed, it was — said 
her mother should be training Susie to the 
backboard instead of having her racing the 
country like a tomboy, that I felt the first 
and unwarranted anger towards those who 
had from the beginning so befriended us. 
Afterwards they owed much to that same 
habit of racing, and afterwards, too, they 
were as kind to her as their warm hearts 
disposed them to be to all. 

But Susie ! It might be that some fine 
day when the wind sang over the waves 
and Marshall was abroad and I lonely, 
perforce, I would betake myself thither, and 
would find her bent above her stitchery. 

“ Jack,” she ’d cry as soon as she heard 
my step within the hall, “ so you ’ve come. 
It ’s just the right moment. I was fair dead 
with weariness ! ” and the white cloth would 
be flung upon the table. 


134 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

“ Let me see it ! ” I would declare with 
some pretence of criticism. 

“As if you know when a seam were 
fairly done ! Give it here ! ” Her head 
would be high in the air, and she would be 
assuming airs of fine ladyship now. 

“ Never ! ” I ’d hold it far above my 
head. “ Those stitches are not evenly done. 
They are — they are higgledy piggledy ! 
And what is this ? ” pointing to a stain in 
the cloth. 

“ That is where I pricked my finger, sir. 
Give it here ! ” She would reach for it, I 
would jump, away we would go round and 
round the room, till her mother, wondering 
at the noise, would come hastening, and 
then would stand — good soul — shaking 
her round sides with laughter. 

“ Come to the kitchen, Jack,” Susie would 
coax. “ There are potatoes, the first we ’ve 
dug ; we can roast them in the ashes, and 
eggs. Mother, you will let us ? ” And she 
would trip away down the wide hall as if she 
cared not a whit for the bit of linen for which 
she had been fighting so valiantly, at which 
I would lay it meekly down upon the table 
and follow her. 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 135 

I loved the great high raftered kitchen 
where the strings of pepper and bunches of 
sage and savory and silvery ropes of onions 
hung, and there was a wide chimney corner 
where Susie and I — when the wind set fair 
with her ladyship, as it did now — would 
hold high revelry, while we waited the 
roasting of our feast. 

Her mother’s kindness, too, was one of 
the bright spots of my life. One of the 
bright spots ! Nay, I think I recall no 
darkness in those days. 

That autumn tide when I first knew her, 
it was Susie who coaxed me aside when 
Marshall and I went hither, and coaxed me 
to porch or barn or stable, and did all 
she could to overcome my shyness. I had 
known little of womankind and their com- 
panionship and when I came to know and 
like it, through the medium of a sunny- 
hearted girl, she no sooner taught me the 
value of it than she turned to flaunt me 
with the knowledge, and I could never guess 
whether I would find her, nose in the air 
and a look of half-fledged ladyhood on her 
face, or beaming with good-nature and 


136 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


ready to join in any foray. More and more 
as she found me acquiescent to her humor, 
quiet when she was disdainful, picking up 
her crumbs of good humor when she chose 
to fling them, she clung to the former. 

It would be, “ Jack, what are you doing 
to-day, I am busied ! ” Her red lips would 
be pursed up, and her eyes glued to her task. 
I verily believe she ran for it when she saw 
my canoe coming that way. “I have no 
time for play. I am to have a governess 
if I do no better. Father threatens every 
day. A governess, la ! what would I do 
with her ? ” And her blue eyes would laugh 
into mine one minute, and she would look 
wistfully out of the window at the gleaming 
water and the green grass, and the half- 
naked trees and the brown leaves blowing 
about under them. Then her needle, if it 
were stitch ery she worked at, would fly 
faster than ever. 

Finally one day in the broken pauses of 
our talk she cried, “ My brothers are in the 
harvest field. You are idle, sir, a great lad 
like you; you should be at work.” 

“ Perhaps I can find it. I ’ll see,” I 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


137 


exclaimed, as I sprang to my feet and seized 
my cap and ran down to my boat, beached 
on the shore. That was too much, even 
from Susie. I took refuge on our island 
and I kept closer at home, and my boyhood’s 
keenness of sport and forage infected Mar- 
shall. He, too, made ready for winter. 

We stored the loft with meal and flour 
and bacon. I added chestnuts and walnuts, 
and begged Tom to help me in the hulling, 
though he must don a pair of buckskin 
gloves, well worn and useless save to keep 
his dainty fingers from the staining, before 
he would touch the green and pulpy hulls 
and pull and beat them from the hard black 
nut within. 

“Tom,” I asked, the morning that I 
begged him for his aid, “you are not going 
abroad to-day ? ” 

He was drawing on his gloves and 
fastening them then at the wrist, and he 
answered “ No ” so shortly I was sorry I 
had questioned him, but I went on talking. 
“ It ’s fine to have a whole day to ourselves 
here, is n’t it ? ” 

Tom looked at me quickly and I blun- 


138 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

dered on: “Not but what we have had 
two or three now, and it's always better 
than visiting and company ; and — and 
women-folks, I am tired of them,” I de- 
clared disdainfully. 

Tom threw back his head and laughed 
until the end of our cabin echoed his shouts 
over marsh and sand and grass. 

“ And so am I,” said he gravely, when 
he could command his voice. “But how 
is it ? I thought you went often to Mr. Wil- 
son's. Are the boys busy in the field ? ” 

I looked up quickly to meet the merry 
glance of his eyes. 

“ I seldom see them,” I confessed. 

“ Well!” 

“ Pshaw, it was Susie and her mother I 
went to see, and she — ” 

“ Susie’s mother ? ” 

“No,” and for the life of me I didn’t 
know what to say. 

“ Ah well,” said Tom blithely, “ we ’ll 
leave them alone, you and I ; ” and then he 
struck a dramatic attitude. 

“ If solid happiness we prize,” he recited 
in clear, ringing voice: 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


139 


“ If solid happiness we prize 
Within our breast this jewel lies ; 

And they are fools who roam ; 

The world has nothing to bestow ; 

From our own selves our joy must flow, 
And that dear hut, our home.” 

He made a pass at me at “ our own 
selves/’ and I struck back at him ; but when 
he retreated to the chimney and shouted 
out “that dear hut, our home/' we roared 
with laughter, both of us. 

Our doldrums were gone, and we fell to 
our work blithely. 

We beat and thrashed the walnuts with 
many a good blow. We jested and laughed 
as lightly as two boys, as indeed both of us 
were. We worked in the shadow of our 
chimney corner, for the sun was hot on 
one’s back when one was stooping to such 
work, until the shadow grew less and less, 
and I stood upright, wiping the perspira- 
tion from my face. 

“ It ’s hot ! ” I declared. 

“ And my back aches ! ” cried Tom. “ I 
suppose youngsters like you have no back- 
bone.” 


140 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


I put my hand behind me and managed 
a whimsical groan. 

“ Lord, what do we want with them all, 
anyway ? ” 

“ I ’ll show you. Wait till the snow and 
ice come, and we have to stay in our cabin 
all day. Tom ! ” I exclaimed in dismay, as 
I saw the little shudder that shook him at 
my words, “ Tom, I believe you are getting 
tired of the island.” 

It was the keenest reproach I had ever 
made him, save one in my own mind, and 
that for the nonce I had forgotten. 

“ And that were treason most despicable. 
Harbor not a thought of such, I prithee! 
Come, rake these things out, separate the 
grain from the chaff; ! ” 

“ There, we have finished them.” 

We spread the freed nuts out on the 
grass for sun and wind to dry. 

“I am hungry, Sir Cook, as hungry — ” 
I tilted my head and looked up at the sun 
overhead. 

“ It ’s high noon,” I declared ; “ come on.” 

We went around to the shelter before the 
cabin door and stood looking on the scene I 
ever loved. 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 141 

The wind blew across the harbor with a 
chill at its core, despite the bright sun over- 
head, and the waves ran bluer than the blue 
sky, with sparkles in their breasts like sparks 
hammered out between wave and sun. Sea- 
fowls were screaming about the island 
fringes, and a wedge of wild geese was fly- 
ing low and clamoring as it went. For the 
life of me I could see naught to make one 
weary. The very elixir of life and the 
deepest living came thrilling along the cur- 
rents of the air, and the music of life sang 
in the lisping of the waves and the sough- 
ing of the dying reeds and grasses. 

But Tom saw it not with my eyes. 

“ Well, well,” he cried, with gaiety a 
little forced, “ ’t is time I applied myself to 
cookery. I ’ve vowed myself a selfish drone 
a thousand times to see you. Jack, we 
should have a black ! ” 

“ Hem ! ” I grunted in disapproval. 

“ Well, you ’ll have to teach me ! ” He 
flung off his blue coat and tossed it on the 
bed, where the brass buttons blazed in the 
sunshine streaming in at the open door, and 
then, as if that were not enough ado, he 


142 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

must send his vest after it, and roll his 
sleeves to the elbow. 

“ Tom, you look — ” 

“You never saw any one look half so 
fine. Where is the meal, and that wooden 
bowl, and the salt ? Lord, how quickly it 
gives out ! ” Salt was the dearest of all our 
stores, and the cost of it was more every 
time we ordered it. 

“We might make it from the water,” I 
ventured, “ evaporating it ; ” but Tom only 
laughed at the idea. “ You must have a 
good fire. I ’ll fix it.” I busied about the 
hearth, pulling out the glowing embers and 
putting the skillet thereon. 

“ Gad ! ” cried Tom, “ I ’ll have an ash 
cake ; no skillet for me ! ” He was mixing 
the meal and water with a hand unutterably 
awkward. 

“ Why, how can you ? There are no 
cabbage leaves.” 

“ As if I would be balked by a cabbage 
leaf ! ” 

He was already shaping the pone, and he 
swore he would not be cheated. He knelt 
before the hearth, and, bending on all fours, 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 143 

blew the ashes carefully from one spot. 
Here he placed the pone and covered it with 
fine hot ashes and put red coals on the top 
of the ashy blanket; and then as he sat 
cross-legged on the carpet before the hearth 
I thought, as I often did, how handsome, 
how manly he was ! He was stripped to his 
shirt, and a silk handkerchief was knotted 
about his firm white throat ; the thatch of 
fair hair on his head was damp with perspi- 
ration, and dusty with the ashes. 

Our senseless words and laughter had 
made us oblivious of aught outside ; and, 
truth to say, we were so accustomed to 
sighting our visitors from afar and hav- 
ing long moments of preparation that we 
dreamed not of surprises. Now we were 
startled by a peal of girlish laughter. 

Tom sprang to his feet, and, seizing coat 
and vest, went flying up the ladder to the 
loft. 

“ Go see who it is, Jack, quick ! ” he 
begged as he fled. 

“ It is Mr. Rousby’s daughters and some 
of the gentlemen of the neighborhood,” I 
called after him. “ I will meet them.” 


144 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


“ For the Lord’s sake keep ’em outside 
awhile,” he pleaded, looking down the open 
trap in the loft. 

“ All right ! ” I ran out and flung the 
door to behind me. 

They were waiting on the bluff for some 
loiterer. 

“Aha, Master Jack, we’ve caught you 
napping now ! ” 

“ It ’s the most delightful dream I ever 
had,” I declared boldly. I was bound to 
forget all about myself and fight for time. 

“ Hear him ! ” cried one of the sisters. 
“ He beats you all ; now had you, sir — ” she 
turned to finish her war of words with the 
gallant nearest her. 

“ Is the boat safe ? ” I called down to 
the young man who was pulling her further 
on the beach. “ The tide makes in strongly 
here. Wait a moment ! ” I begged the 
women, and ran down the bluff and made 
great show of fastening the boat. 

“ Come on ! ” called those above us, “ we 
have only a half-hour to stay.” 

“ Oh, yes ! ” cried the dimpled daughter 
— Rosalind — when I was again with them ; 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 145 

“ we caught you this time. Where were you 
that you did n’t see us ? ” 

“ Now, Rosalind,” broke in Jane, “ you 
know we were sailing up the creek and the 
island hid us.” 

“ And there was no one to meet us at the 
beach,” pouted Rosalind. 

“ Surely you had assistants enough,” ex- 
claimed one of their attendants. 

“ We had no idea of coming at all,” said 
Jane bluntly, “ only Bess would have it so.” 

“ Where is Marshall ? ” 

“ There he is ! ” I cried with a breath of 
relief, for Tom on the instant showed him- 
self at the cabin door. 

There was nothing about the cabin now 
to make one tingle with shame as they went 
flocking in, only a home comfortable enough 
for a man and boy “ in retirement,” and Tom 
welcomed them with dignity that might 
have been that of a lord within his castle. 
Only I caught, or fancied I caught, now and 
then some slight show of haughty stateli- 
ness, such as I had been aware of when I 
first saw him in the office of the Golden 
Horse, but had well-nigh forgot. 

10 


146 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

It was when he spoke to Mistress Bess I 
saw this look flash out upon his face, which 
grew paler for the moment ; but the young 
women so beset me that I could think only 
for myself and then not fast enough. 

How could they so see everything and 
find out everything and know everything ? 
What had they to do with the time I took 
Susie rowing or our last race when the horse 
had stumbled and thrown me headlong in 
the water and I had gotten a wetting ? Why 
should their hints and questions, merry as 
they were, so sting me? Well, well, many 
another boy has felt as I did then, manly 
and strong and self-reliant, until he was face 
to face with a pretty woman scarce more 
than a year or two older than he, and yet 
making him feel a clumsy whelp. 

My ears never ceased their burning, nor 
did the warmth creep back to my finger tips 
for hours after being the butt of their teas- 
ing. Still deep in my heart was a warm 
feeling for Mistress Bess. She, too, was 
shy; I had read her blushes and her half- 
veiled glances. She was slighter and more 
girlish- looking than the sisters, and her 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


147 


dark eyes, neither blue nor black and yet 
not altogether gray, said all manner of 
things to one when she was won to talk. 
Now, though her speech was saucier than its 
wont, her eyes were dark and sad when she 
fell silent. 

“ You ’ll take us over the island again,” 
she cried merrily, “and the men shall be 
left behind.” She glanced at them coquet- 
tishly as they stood about the hearth. 

“ So he it,” said Tom gaily. “ Gentlemen, 
you’ll join me in a smoke while we are 
deserted.” 

The men looked dubious. 

“ Of course,” cried Mistress Bess again, 
“ the very thing ! ” 

“ Faith, a smoke would go well ! ” 

“ You ’ve worked so hard all morning. 
Come on, Jack, you can be our host ! ” 

I looked to see if the shot told, but Tom, 
with utmost politeness, was handing to his 
guests the pipes we had fashioned from 
corn-cobs of the season's growing and the 
hollow reeds of which we found abundance 
in our marsh. 

“ They are the best you ’ve ever held 


148 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


between your teeth/’ he declared, “ and the 
tobacco is of the best.” 

Somehow our loitering about the island 
was a dreary one, our jests fell flat, we 
were not long away, and when we sighted 
through the open door the group about the 
hearth, the wreaths of smoke floating 
above their heads to the rough low rafters, 
it made too cheery a picture. It jarred 
upon the young women, who would like to 
have thought themselves missed. 

“You are too comfortable to disturb,” 
cried one of the sisters ; “ we ’ll not come 
in.” 

“ Then we will come out in the open ! ” 
exclaimed Marshall, knocking the ashes 
from his pipe and coming out to talk to 
Mistress Jane, the others following him. 

I went into the cabin, and poor Mistress 
Bess followed me. “ Have you a quill and 
ink ? ” she whispered, looking nervously 
about. 

The quill and ink-horn stood ever on the 
rude mantle-shelf hobnobbing with the pipe 
and tobacco jars, and on the peg-rack above, 
our guns. I reached for the quill at once, 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 149 

but could find no writing paper, and when 
I would have called Marshall, she clapped 
a soft hand on my mouth. 

“ Here, here ! ” She seized a card from 
the pack that was likewise on the shelf, and 
smiled as she saw it was the ace of hearts. 
“ This will do,” she whispered ; and dipping 
the quill in ink she wrote a few words 
where she stood against the table. 

“ Give this to him,” she begged, and we 
needed no mention of names. I slipped it 
into my pocket, while I looked into her 
eyes and could have sworn they were as 
dark as a fawn's and as pathetic. 

She slipped away, and when I followed 
her was saying, “ We must be going. 'T is 
past our dinner hour.” 

“ Why, surely,” began Marshall, “ you 
will dine with us ? ” 

I thought of the ash-cake and groaned 
inwardly. “ Oh, no,” they swore, “ we 'd 
not put Jack's cookery to the test. Come 
go with us. There 's room for two in the 
boats.” 

“ And in the dining hall ! ” 

I shook my head when I caught Tom's 


150 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

glance, and spite of all their protestations 
he would not. 

We watched them sail away and turned 
back to our quiet cabin, over which the 
gay whirlwind had blown, and Tom threw 
himself moodily in the chair by the table. 

“ The ash-cake is all right/’ I assured 
him, as I raked it out and carried it to the 
door and poured a gourd of water over it to 
wash the ashes from the crust, “ and there 
is some cold fowl ; we ’ll have to make 
that do.” 

“Aye, it’s all right!” said Tom still 
dreamily. “ Better is ” — he broke himself 
a piece of the steaming bread. “ How does 
it go? ‘ Better is a dish of herbs upon the 
house-top than a full dinner and a con- 
tentious woman.’ For the life of me I 
don’t know if that’s the way it goes, but 
it ’s all the same ; it ’s true, too, true ! ” 

But that was before I gave him the card. 


CHAPTER XI. 


1 AM as hungry as a wolf,” he cried 
when he had read it. 

“ You have eaten little enough for a day 
or two,” I said carelessly. 

“ Tut, I ’ll make amends ! ” 

And he did ; and then resting his arms 
upon the table and his head in his hands, 
he turned his face once more toward the 
Hall, and looked dreamily out on the sun- 
lit harbor, his face as bright as the scene 
without. Yet the card held a scant half- 
dozen words, and the first of these I had 
seen — “ Forgive me.” 

By and by, as I busied about the cabin, 
Marshall spoke of the matter. There are 
two kinds of confidants to which it is 
easiest to unburden one’s self, the young 
who are not yet entangled in the meshes 
that surround one in the thick of life, and 
the old who have passed through the press 


152 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


and look back with clearer vision. Both 
see things in truer values. And the confi- 
dent friendship of a young and ardent 
nature is a thing to be desired, earnestly. 

So it was that Marshall told me many 
things that would never have passed his lips 
to older men ; and after he had been silent 
for a happy thoughtful space, he turned 
towards me : “ They think I am no true pa- 
triot, Jack.” 

My heart jumped and turned sick and 
faint within me, to hear my only doubt of 
him put in such cold words. 

“ Is it patriotic to rush with foolhardi- 
ness into war?” 

I was silent and fumbled with nervous 
fingers amongst the few dishes I was put- 
ting in a small cupboard in the chimney 
corner. 

“ Is it patriotic when you see a govern- 
ment bent on self-destruction to praise it 
or to make no comment concerning it ? ” 

Still I made no answer. 

“ Come ! ” He sprang to his feet. “ Once 
for all, if we fend for ourselves, you are 
not going to do all the fending.” And 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 153 

from that day he would do his part, 
though I often wished otherwise. 

“What think you?” he added whim- 
sically. 

“ Now the war is begun,” I began hesi- 
tatingly, but went on more boldly, “ what 
would you — what could any one do? We 
are attacked, we must defend ourselves.” 

“ Aye, that we will ! And there we ’ll 
win, if ever.” 

“You said there would be fighting 
here.” 

“ And here we will defend ourselves. 
Hear me, boy ! This stupid president and 
his cabinet have gotten us in a hole they 
know not how to pull us out of. Wait 
till it comes home to men how deep he ’s 
pulled us in, and every man finds he ’s fight- 
ing for himself and his home — ” 

“‘ We ’ll never give up the soil ! 9 ” I 
shouted, calling the rallying cry which had 
just begun to rouse the men of the North- 
ern States, and was filtering down our way. 

“And we've got to fight for it right 
here or I ’m no prophet,” said Tom calmly. 

“ What would you do ? ” 


154 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


“Wait and see,” snapped Tom. 

“ Come, come outside ! ” he called shortly 
after. “Bring your gun ; ’t is time you were 
learning soldierly arts !” And Tom lost his 
sarcasm in the real interest of what fol- 
lowed. He set up a target on the hillside 
and taught me to handle my gun and hold 
myself in soldierly fashion, and to march 
by sign and countersign ; and when I would 
know whence came his knowledge he vowed 
“ it was a thing every man in Georgia 
knew, the militia looked out for that.” 
And I learned many things. 

So went the early winter and a gay 
Christmas-tide. Hard on its heel came ru- 
mors that a British fleet sailed for the Ches- 
apeake. The anxiety those about us felt 
broke out afresh. Whether we went abroad 
or visitors came to us the talk was the 
same — what should be done ? 

On one thing all agreed. Knowing the 
tale of British outrage on the New England 
coast, they resolved to conceal their val- 
uables and flee from their homes, once 
the enemy’s ships were seen beyond Piney 
Point. 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


155 


In February came the news that the fleet 
was, indeed, in Hampton Roads. But for 
a time the winter stood our friend. The 
cold was bitter and intense. The harbor 
was frozen in such fashion as our neighbors 
had never seen it. We went walking to 
Rousby Hall and to the Wilson’s; and 
while such frost lasted, we dwelt secure. 
But it broke in a night. The soft south 
winds beginning to blow, in less than 
twenty-four hours we saw our glistening 
harbor breaking, melting, and soon after, 
the ice-floes floating on the ebb-tide bay- 
ward ; soon, again, the water ran open and 
sparkling and free. 

Then it was agreed amongst the planters 
along the coast of bay and river that heaps 
of wood and fagots should be piled upon 
the headlands, and, at the first sight of 
hostile ships, should be fired. Catching the 
sight of one, the next planter must set his 
signal, until the blazing beacons far up the 
bay should warn the people to make ready 
for flight. 

I went down to Piney Point to help build 
the brush heap there. We laid pine and 


156 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


fat-wood, oak and hickory branches, corn- 
stalks from the near-by field, pine saplings 
from the clearing; and never a night but 
what I watched for its blazing. 

Did it rain, I feared the wood would be 
so wet there would be no burning when the 
need of it came ; did it snow, I fancied the 
heap like an Indian’s wigwam, snow-covered 
and snow-soaked. When the harbor ran 
fierce and white-capped, I gazed toward it ; 
when the sleeting rain shut us in so we 
could scarcely see beyond our shores, I still 
looked that way when I went to door or 
window for a glimpse of the outside world ; 
or when the snow blanketed us and shut us 
from outside visions. 

When the spring winds blew about our 
cabin and sang in the chimney-top, I 
thought of the drying heap. Once we sailed 
down to it and built it up again — the 
Wilson boys and I — and put fresh dry 
wood in the heart of it ; and then one night 
ere I went to bed, looking, as I did last of 
all, out into the night I saw, running up 
against the darkness of night, the ruddy 
gleam of its burning. 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 157 

I needed to speak no words to Tom, who 
was standing by my side. Our fire was low 
and the embers ash-covered for the night. 
We had no valuables to hide. Tom carried 
our money upon his person. We ran down 
to the boat, pushed off, and made for Rousby 
Hall. 

Now from the other point of our curving 
harbor the signal flashed, and I knew that 
for many miles the beacons gave their red 
warning. For a space my fingers trembled 
so I could scarce bend them around the oar 
I had seized. The weirdness of the night, 
starry and sharp, awed me ; the water ran 
dark and sullen under the starlight, and 
there, at the entrance of our beautiful 
peaceful harbor, blazed the messages that 
told us we might fear any fate for the 
quiet, happy homes by the water-side. 

The Rousbys were all ready for their 
flight. The women were pale and quiet, 
but their doings in such case had been so 
often talked of they had, now, but to follow 
the dictates of their memory. 

Most of the noise and confusion came 
from the negroes. They were groaning and 


158 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


praying, and calling out snatches of hymns 
and Scripture. Mr. Rousby and his over- 
seer stayed with them, and there we found 
him, near the quarters. 

“ Marshall,” he called, as soon as he 
glimpsed us, in the quick decisive tones 
which were apt to enforce obedience, “ you 
will go in the carriage with the women, you 
and Jack. I see you have your weapons. 
God only knows what need there may be 
of them ! ” 

“ We must stay with you, sir,” said Tom 
firmly. “ This is the post of danger.” 

“ And I give you the post of honor ! I 
cannot leave the slaves.” And then coming 
closer he whispered, “ I dare not.” 

There had been ugly rumors recently. 
The British had set forth a proclamation as 
to their freedom, and to their deeds which, 
had the negroes known it, might have run 
like fire amongst their ranks ; and which, 
somehow had made a vague restlessness, a 
nightmare dread that while the men faced 
the enemy, there might be a foe at home 
would do deeds horrible beyond the telling. 
This was the fear that in the days to come 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


159 


tied so many men and kept them rusting in 
watchful anxiety at home. 

“ The women will be safe,” said Tom. 
“ We had best stay with you.” 

“ Can’t a man command his own planta- 
tion ! ” Mr. Rousby spoke shortly. “ You 
are too good a soldier to question an order. 
Do as you are bid ! ” He put his hand on 
Tom’s shoulder and turned him houseward. 
“ You, too, Jack ! ” And at that order we 
left him. 

The doors of the great Hall were flung 
wide, the candles flickered in the draught 
until there was scarcely light enough to see 
the confusion. The women were there, 
cloaked and bonneted. 

“ Ah, Jack ! ” cried Mistress Bess, in a 
tone of relief I could not think was meant 
for me alone. She knew Marshall could 
not be far away. 

“ Jack, is the fleet coming in ? ” “ Could 

you see ? ” “ Are the ships in sight ? ” 

“ Where is father ? ” “ Is n’t the carriage 

ready ? ” “ How slow they are ! I am fair 

dead of fear.” “Did you see them?” 

“We could see nothing,” said I, answer- 


160 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

ing this last question. “Tom thinks the 
signals may have been set ere they passed 
the first beacon, and we may not see the 
ships before morning.” 

“ Ah, my muff ! ” cried Rosalind, “ I had 
clear forgot it ! Jane, run for some blankets. 
Oh, we will freeze ! ” 

At that I had to laugh. 

“ You need n’t laugh at such a time as 
this, and you know it is cold, it’s fairly 
midnight.” 

“ Why does n’t the carriage come ? ” 

“ Hush, dear, hush ! ” pleaded gentle 
Mrs. Rousby, who had been hastily pack- 
ing a basket of food. “ Be quiet ! ” She 
stood for a second looking with tear-dimmed 
eyes about her. “ If all be true they tell 
of them, we may never see our home 
again.” 

“ Hush, mother,” pleaded Mistress Bess, 
“ perhaps they may not even enter the har- 
bor. We must go ! Ah, there is the car- 
riage.” She tucked her hand through her 
mother’s arm under her pelisse, and I on the 
other side gravely offered her my escort. 

Tom stood waiting by the carriage door. 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


161 


A negro was at the head of the restless 
horses and another on the box. The candle 
gleam showed him ashy white, and his shak- 
ing fingers were little equal to managing 
the horses. 

“ Get in quickly ! ” called Tom, as he 
lifted Mrs. Rousby up the steps, and then 
the sisters one by one. 

“ You must come with us,” pleaded Bess, 
“ there is room ! ” But I pulled away and 
made pretence of searching for robes and 
blankets and wrapping the women care- 
fully. 

“ Where are you going ? ” called Tom, as 
I turned quickly away. 

“ Wait ! Hand me my gun ! ” He sprang 
up beside the driver. I handed him his 
weapon and he laid it across his lap. I could 
see the shine of the barrel in the cold 
starlight, as the horses gave a plunge and 
were away. 

I ran towards the quarters. I had ex- 
pected a blaze of wrath from Mr. Rousby as 
I told him boldly, “ They are gone. I am 
going to stay with you.” 

At the sharp sound of the retreating car- 
11 


162 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


riage wheels the groaning of the negroes 
broke out afresh. The lights from the open 
doors shone on wild scenes, but Mr. Rousby 
with alternate coaxing and swearing kept 
some control over them and brought them 
to order. They were ready to march. 

“ Jack ! ” cried Mr. Rousby, soon as I be- 
spoke him, “ take this fellow.” He called a 
negro lad to him, one of the house servants 
who tended the fires. “ Look to the locking 
of the house, cover the fires, close the shut- 
ters, lock and bar the doors; then follow. 
We go straight down the chapel road. 
March ! get ahead there ! march ! ” 

By the time we reached the house they 
were across the lawn, lost in the darkness. 
The negro lad and I were alone, and he 
was so wretchedly afraid I bade him wait 
in the hall as I ran from room to room. I 
scraped the logs and embers on each hearth 
hurriedly together, and blanketed them with 
ashes. I wrestled with shutters so long 
unused that they hung rusty on their 
hinges. I blew out the glittering candies, 
and before their flickering was done shud- 
dered at the ghostly loomings of the great 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


163 


beds, dusky in their hangings ; and in my 
hurry, in the last room of all, I ran into a 
table, sent it crashing, and fell headlong 
after it. As I stumbled to my feet I knocked 
a box of shell-work open and a silhouette 
rolled out. Even in the anger of my awk- 
wardness and amidst the thrills of awesome 
feelings that were creeping over me, I felt a 
second’s mirth — the room was Mistress 
Bessie’s and the silhouette, clear cut as a 
Greek’s, was Tom’s. I thrust it in my 
breast, trusting to use it as a jest and turn 
her teasing, and ran clattering down the 
broad stair, my footsteps echoing like can- 
nonadings in the empty house. 

I called the negro. We barred the great 
leaves of the door which were wont to stand 
winter and summer opened to the meadow 
slope and the flashing bay beyond, and then 
I turned the huge key of brass in the lock 
of the front door. 

Never since its building had Rousby Hall 
been forsaken. Now it stood dark, forbid- 
ding, its chimney-tops looming against the 
starlit sky, reddened near its rim by the 
beacon fires ; but I had not a thought for 


164 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


it, neither its sentiment nor its sadness. I 
was filled with a desire to overtake Mr. 
Rousby ; and the negro being moved by a 
like impulse, we fled across the lawn. The 
faster he ran, the faster ran I for fear of 
being left behind, and my speed served to 
lend wings to his nimble heels. Before 
they had reached the “ big road ” we were 
with them. 

It was dawn when we reached the cabin, 
newly built on the outskirts of a fresh 
cleared field, where the women and Marshall 
waited us. There we rested, and there the 
family decided to stay. Mr. Rousby took 
the slaves a few miles further on where he 
found quarters for them. Then he returned. 

All that day we waited in anxious fear, 
with no sound about us save that of our 
own voices or the whispering of the spring 
winds in the budding woods. Mr. Rousby 
slept on the robes and blankets piled in a 
corner of the cabin, the women loitered 
about and talked in low tones, but I was 
eaten with disquietude. Did the British fly 
their flag in our beautiful harbor ? Was our 
island home un visited ? 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


165 


The sting of such thoughts was past en- 
durance. I stole from the group to which I 
had been talking, passed the cabin, and 
came upon Marshall and Mistress Bess gath- 
ering violets. Gathering violets ! I was full 
of scorn of Marshall. What matter if the 
ground at the forest's edge were purple with 
them or blue with wild forget-me-nots ? 
What matter if the day were soft and sunny, 
and the sky gleamed blue overhead, and the 
winds were laden with the smell of new 
leaves ? I had no heart for it. I loitered on 
to where the horses were tied in the woods. 
No one noticed me. I loosed one, sprang on 
his back, and turned his head homeward. 
The woods made soft and silent highway. 
Unseen and unheard, we slipped away. We 
pounded along the clay road or softly 
through the sand, until we were at the 
mouth of the lane and before the big gate. 
Then I went cautiously. I drew my beast 
off to the bordering wood when his hoof- 
beats fell softly. I peered through long 
vistas of pine, but saw never a sign of a 
scarlet coat. I neared the second gate, 
turned into it, came to the edge of the 


166 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

wood, and saw — fields greening with wheat 
or freshly ploughed for corn, running down 
to the sparkling water, and in their midst 
the Hall, deserted, forsaken, lifting its 
smokeless chimney-tops to the soft blue 
sky. 

I ventured nearer, looking warily for 
surprise ; but when I drew rein at the lawn 
gate and looked out over the harbor, I saw 
it as it had shone yesterday, purple and 
silvered and peaceable, and with quick, 
joyous visions I gazed upon the white 
stretches of our island and the outlines of 
our cabin. 

For this once, the terror had passed 
us by. 


CHAPTER XII. 


L ITTLE by little came the tale from the 
country where the enemy had landed. 
Annapolis, seeing the beacon fires, had set 
her bells ringing, gathered her state papers 
and valuables, and fled inland. That was at 
three of the morning. The fleet must have 
passed us before midnight, and had they 
minded coming thither we had scant time 
for flight. Then we heard of the fright in 
Baltimore, and how the enemy lay in the 
upper bay and harassed the country. 

Elkton and Havre-de-Grace and French- 
town, stores destroyed, houses burnt, ships 
fired, bridges blown up, mills wrecked ; 
Fredericton and Georgetown, pillaged and 
burnt. The news of it with many a story 
of horror filtered down to us, and we thanked 
God for the peace of our country side. All 
that year it held. The fleet, that mischief 
done, went back to its wrathful watch near 
Norfolk. 


168 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

Yet we dwelt in alarms. Many of the 
valuables of the households we visited were 
safely hidden and remained so. There was 
a nervous strain and tension everywhere, 
and men told with bated breath of the 
enemy’s deeds in Virginia. There was an 
undercurrent, too, darker and more dread- 
ful, of negro foment. There was a secret 
amongst them, and stolen midnight meetings 
and strange negroes were found about the 
country and sent scurrying out of it. 

We kept a semblance of the old routine. 
Summer came and went on our quiet island, 
but not the same delicious careless days of 
the year gone by. We visited, we sailed 
the harbor, I roamed the woodland, we 
hunted, fished, yet had the days scarce gone 
around to the twelvemonth when danger 
and disaster were upon us. 

It was the very first of June of the year 
1814, and it was such a day as brings one’s 
pulses to the full. We had been practising 
at the target, Tom and I, and had thrown our- 
selves upon the green grass at the bluff’s 
bold edge to rest, when echoing over the 
waters came a dull booming, loud, persis- 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 169 

tent. At the sound of it Marshall went 
white and I felt cold with nervous dread. 

“ Where is it ? ” I queried, as we listened. 

" Down there beyond the rivers mouth.” 

“ It can’t be — no, it is on the water.” 

My first thought had been that the enemy 
had landed on the soil of Maryland nearest 
the Potomac, and the militia were striving 
to drive them back. I ventured this guess 
to Tom. 

“ No,” he declared, “ the militia is not 
sufficiently organized to give battle, else 
they would have done so earlier.” 

“ Then,” said I, “ it must be the flotilla 
which we have heard was fitted in Balti- 
more for our defence.” 

"So I think!” 

The booming was louder and closer. 
Now we knew the British fleet had ven- 
tured nearer and nearer, until it lay in 
the Potomac, and that the water-side on 
either hand had been desperately ravaged ; 
that houses had been burnt, barns rifled, 
furniture destroyed and carried off, until 
the only tale I knew to parallel their deeds 
were those of the old piratical days when 


170 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


Dane and Norwegian harassed England. 
Just so they laid us waste. So it was that 
we had been living, seeing our day of dread 
creeping closer and closer and knowing 
that it would come. That booming there 
was the breaking of its dawn, and we knew 
it well. 

“Look over on the beach there/’ I cried, 
pointing towards the curve before the 
meadow about the Hall. “ There is Mr. 
Rousby and all his household.” I sprang 
to my feet. “ And there is Mr. Wilson also,” 
as I looked to the other side. “ They are 
waving to us from Mr. Rousby’s. Come 
on ! ” called Tom, running down to the 
beach; and once more we pushed off our 
boat and rowed across, terror bearing us 
company. 

We found the group on the beach quite 
calm. Mr. Rousby was even jubilant. 
“ Barney has found them, sir ! ” Barney was 
the brave commander of the flotilla, which 
had sailed from Baltimore for the protection 
of the exposed country along the water. 
“ Barney has found them, and he ’ll give 
’em a dose I warrant you ! ” 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 171 

“ But he is not strong enough to fight 
the fleet,” said Tom. 

Mr. Rousby gave him an irascible glance. 
“ No, but — ” 

“ Look there ! ” I called, for around the 
fringe of pines I saw the gleam of a sail. 
A vessel hove in sight, another and an- 
other; the firing was incessant. We could 
see the puff of smoke and belch of flames, 
as the largest of the shipping swung to and 
the rest came gliding by her to safety, nearer 
and nearer into the harbor; then the other 
side — whether it were friend or foe — be- 
ing driven from the refugee’s heels, we saw 
them close together and come to anchor. 
As the smoke died away and the flags floated 
out on the air, we could see at the head of 
the largest a broad red pennant, and then 
from another a flag of white, and from a 
third, one of blue. 

“ Hurrah, hurrah ! ” I cried, “ hurrah for 
Barney and the red, white, and blue ! ” 

I verily believe every soul of them joined, 
women and all, in the cry, for when I 
stopped my capering, Mr. Rousby was blow- 
ing his nose vehemently, and calling to one 


172 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


of the negroes, “ Get that boat, sir ; run her 
out. Get the sail and oars, too ! ” I was 
seeing everything through a mist, but even 
then I could see some trembling lips and 
wet lashes. 

“We will pay the Commodore a visit,” 
he said in stately manner. “ Jane, you and 
your sisters had best return to the house. 
I feared your mother was not well. See to 
her,” he commanded, and sprang into the 
boat, Tom and I following him. 

Even as we sailed I noted the frightened 
sea-fowl, the circling gulls and darting 
black-heads and screaming fish-hawks, and 
it seemed an ominous thing — that warlike 
array within our harbor ; but most ominous 
of all, a great watch-dog of a brig dropped 
into position, before we reached the Com- 
modore, and lay, at the river’s mouth, like 
a British bulldog watching, watching. 

What a welcome we got from the Com- 
modore! His decks were not yet cleared 
from the action, his men were grimmed 
with powder, but his dress was spotless, his 
manner stately and genial at once. 

“ Not a man hurt,” he boasted when Mr. 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 173 

Rousby asked him of the engagement. 
“We aimed for Tangier Island.” 

“ Would you had reached it ! ” 

“ Ah/’ with a keen look at the planter, 
“ we intend to break up the negro encamp- 
ment there.” 

“ Where every black villain who can es- 
cape his master has taken refuge.” 

“ They are drilling them for a negro 
regiment.” 

“They have one, sir, already in their 
service.” 

“Well, we wished at least to break this 
up ; the British guard is not overly strong. 
A little below here we met two of the 
enemy’s schooners and several barges. We 
gave chase ; we fairly had ’em when out of 
the Potomac comes the Dragon, seventy-four 
guns, and all the rest of ’em, and we had 
to take to our heels.” 

I left them fighting it over again, for at 
the instant a boat put out from the vessel 
where flew the flag of white, and the man 
commanding the crew — yes, I would have 
known him anywhere, in any dress, even the 
uniform which became his round figure and 


174 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

grizzled face but illy. I started to point 
him out to Tom, but he was too intent upon 
the Commodore’s words, so I hastened to 
the side of the vessel he was approaching. 

“ Captain ! ” I called, as he clambered 
aboard. 

“ Man alive, it ’s Jack ! Name o’ wonder, 
boy, what have you been doing ? ” 

“ Nothing ! ” 

“Nothing? Well, it’s time you were. 
Nothing — ” 

“ There was nothing to do,” I said hotly, 
answering more the half-scornful wonder 
of his voice than his words. 

“ It ’s time you found something, a great 
youngster like you. Well, you’ve been 
growing anyhow ; you are bigger than the 
lieutenant on this boat. Jackson ! ” he 
called, and a smart-looking young fellow 
lounging near us, and looking to my eyes 
inordinately proud of his epaulettes, came 
loitering up. “ Here is a young fellow who 
has found nothing to do for a year or two 
but grow up.” 

“ Glad to have you join the service,” 
said the young officer indolently. “ Old as 
I am?” 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


175 


“ Fifteen ! ” I was angered through and 
through, both with my old friend’s welcome 
and this cockerel’s insolence. I had lived 
too long and too intimately with older men 
not to resent it. 

“ The Commodore was second mate at 
fourteen,” said the officer languidly, “and 
commander at sixteen. It’s his proudest 
boast,” then after a little pause, “or one 
of them.” 

The Captain saw my discomfiture. “ W ell, 
it ’s never too late, you know ! Look 
there! ” He pointed to the boats, sloops, 
and barges, small and large, sixteen in 
all. “ There ’s room for many a man. But 
come, this is not — why, boy, I rowed 
over to ask leave to visit the island. Is all 
as I left it ? ” 

And we fell into talk of our daily affairs, 
until Marshall called that he was going. 
There was a hearty greeting between him 
and the Captain, and the Commodore’s face 
lighted with good-nature when he heard 
the tale of our friendship, our shipwreck, 
and our island. He vowed he would visit 
us, and came to us once or twice and swore 


176 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


he was mightily pleased ; and he went to 
Rousby Hall and the Wilson’s likewise, and 
in his bluff, hearty manner made to himself 
friends of the people of the water-side in the 
week that he lay there, the brig and her 
attendants at the river’s mouth, where 
another gunboat joined her and then an- 
other, and then on the seventh day of her 
watch, came a great frigate and a sloop-of- 
war. 

Then the Commodore was compelled to 
retreat to shallow water, where his small 
boats might have some vantage in the fight 
which was close at hand. 

We watched them lift anchor, and there 
was no chance of flight now ; Mrs. Rousby 
lay ill to death. Mr. Rousby, his overseer, 
Marshall and I, were a household guard. 
Should we need further help the militia 
of the county, ill-organized, fear-stricken, 
had promised it. We watched them lift 
anchor, glide by our island, by the long 
reach of Point Patience, the enemy close 
upon their heel. And the next day and 
the next, the next and the next again, 
there was booming and thundering that 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 177 

echoed over the country and through the 
chamber where Death seemed hovering. 

How hard it was to feel bound by every 
tie, as Marshall had put it, bound to stay 
dull and inactive, and to know that no 
further away than St. Leonard’s Creek men 
were spilling their blood for our safety! 

Barney was neither captured nor free, 
but held his own; so for a month. Then 
again the booming, booming, all through 
the summer s afternoon, and at break of 
day the British fleet, beaten off, was steal- 
ing away around Piney Point. 


12 


CHAPTER XIII. 


M RS. ROUSBY’S fever had left her. 

Mr. Rousby had gone on pressing 
business to Baltimore, leaving Tom to watch 
over his household. Barney was up the 
river, sending a most urgent message to us 
that should the enemy appear in the harbor 
we should give him swift warning. I felt 
as if we, at the river’s mouth, kept watch 
and ward. A tedious one it became to me, 
for a very itch for adventure possessed me. 
The Captain’s words, the young officer’s 
insolent air, the life pounding in my own 
veins, were a constant incentive. 

Marshall was much at the Hall, and the 
days fell again dull and quiet. Solitary 
paddling and roaming no longer pleased me. 
Marshall, seeing my dullness, vowed one 
morning he should bide at home as they 
did not need him at the Hall, and at his 
words I felt a most unreasonable joy, a boy- 
ish rebound from my doldrums. 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


179 


The dawn of that day was fair, with clear 
sky save in the scarlet east ; and the bay lay 
shimmering, gleaming, without a wave to 
mark even its current, only a slow heave 
about its lazy edge and a long billowy roll 
on its breast now and then, while the tide 
rested before its turn. 

I was as merry as the wild fowl flitting 
about the fringes of the island, and could 
have whistled like the mocking-bird that 
carolled from our cabin roof, for Tom and I 
planned many things and we had the whole 
of the long sunny day for the doing of them. 
Therefore no sooner had I flung open the 
cabin door and breathed a long breath of 
the strong salt air than I fell into song, and 
curiously enough I shouted out : 

“ Our march is on the turnpike road, 

Our home is at the inn/* 

It brought Rob and the big blue wagon, 
the prancing horses and jingling bells, so 
close before me, I must rub my eyes to shut 
out the sight of them ; and here was our 
island. Tom was moving lazily about in 
the cabin, and out there — I looked with 


180 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

wide-open eyes to see it all, to feel the life 
of it once again, and as I looked from 
glistening wave to curving shore, from land 
to land, I fairly groaned. There on the 
beach was one of the daughters of the Hall, 
waving a big white something in her hand. 
It was the signal that Tom was needed, and 
I was fairly angered to see how eager he 
was to be gone, and how impatient at the 
light winds which kept us tacking to and 
fro. Finally we took to our oars, and, hot 
and damp, grounded our boat at Mistress 
Bessie's feet, who stood daintily fresh and 
provokingly cool, her slender figure and 
billowy skirts outlined against the green 
slope behind her. 

“ Mother is worse," she told him shyly. 
“ Not seriously, no ! but we thought best — 
do you think we should summon Doctor 
Conroy ? ” And so I left them, Mistress 
Bess pale and troubled. I noted it as I did 
her light dress, beflounced and beribboned, 
and the thin morocco shoes wet with dew, 
and Tom, too, fair and stalwart and anxious. 
A good enough picture it was, the two 
standing there, the water lapping near their 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


181 


feet and the green land running up be- 
yond ; but the grouping of it had spoiled 
my day. 

I sailed out idly into the harbor. The 
day was young, and I knew not what to do 
with it. I tacked back and forth, watching 
the gulls skimming the waves and splashing 
under them for their prey; watched the 
crabs scuttling through the clear water, the 
shiny gleam of swimming fish and the green 
trailing banners of the seaweeds ; and then, 
the wind springing up, as it often did in 
the late morning hours, the boat heeled 
over and we went splitting through the 
waves, white capped now, and for the mere 
joy of it I kept her to it. 

She sailed beautifully, our little “ Hawk ” ; 
and one other thought likewise, for, sailing 
near the Wilson’s house, Susie ran down to 
the beach and waved to me. 

“ Come in to the shore ! ” she called. 

“ What for ? ” Her ladyship had been 
somewhat peevish and I was on my guard. 

“ I want to go sailing ! ” She put her 
white hands up to her rosy mouth and 
called through them. The wind blew the 


182 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


sunbonnet from her head and the fair hair 
about her face, smiling and wondrously 
sunny, so I obeyed. But I was somewhat 
silent as we sailed out again into the harbor, 
seeing which she must make herself bright 
and charming as the day, and nothing 
would serve but that I must come ashore 
and dine with her and her mother. The 
father and brothers were in the far-off field, 
where their dinner would be sent, and they 
would be alone. 

Dinner over, we must have a ride. True, 
the horses were brought with dignity to the 
door and Susie sprang sidewise on her 
young lady's saddle, but the ride was none 
the less a mad race and frolic. 

The beach was firm and wide. A strong 
whistling wind which blew from midday to 
sunset through all but few of our summer 
days was bringing the tide thundering along 
the beach and dashing the spray against 
our horses' flanks, too used to such to notice 
or care for it. Susie’s fair hair whipped 
about her rosy face, her blue eyes shone 
bright as stars, and her teeth gleamed be- 
tween her rosy lips. 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


183 


We rode sedately down the curve, around 
the pond with its fresh water so near the 
salt waves of the harbor, down past the 
hollow of Mattapanient, and out of sight. 
Then we were free. Without a word we 
loosed our horses’ reins and leaned for- 
ward. The joy of it ! The horses flew 
neck and neck. The wind whirled off 
my cap and the waves caught it and kept 
it. I did not even turn to see. Susie’s skirt 
blew out straight, and shook and bellied as 
we raced onward ; she struck at it with the 
dogwood switch she carried, but that was 
all. The sun blazed down on us, but the 
air was as cool as autumn. Past fields and 
marshes, and woods and reeds, we raced on, 
neither out-distanced, until we were forced to 
draw rein and own our beasts well trained, 
and we knew who had done the training. 

The beach curved fair and true as an 
Italian picture, and far down at the very 
end was a point, pine-fringed. It was a 
good six miles away, and we had never rid- 
den so far, but now nothing would suit 
Susie but to push on. Her mother, good, 
easy soul, would make no ado, and her 


184 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


father and brothers were well away. It 
looked like a print, she would have it, of a 
palm-fringed isle in a book of her father’s, 
and it was her whim to see it nearer. On 
and on we rode ; the pines loomed nearer and 
nearer, until our horses went slowly under 
the green, singing branches and we rested 
in their shadow and listened to the music 
overhead and the dashing of the waves 
near by. 

We sprang from our horses to rest on the 
pine needles and to look with delighted eyes 
along the wide blue Chesapeake. Above 
our harbor not a vessel showed, the water 
ran tumultuous, but no sail flecked the bay. 
We turned our eyes the other way. I 
sprang to my feet and faced Susie. Her 
cheeks had gone white as her white bodice, 
her blue eyes were dark with fright. There 
in full view, tacking up the bay, was the 
whole British fleet. 

I smile now as I think how ceremoniously 
I put Susie on her horse, how meekly she 
submitted, Susie who could spring from the 
ground to the back of any beast, how we 
turned and raced back ; and I looked with 












JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 185 

longing eyes at the beacon heap. I had 
neither flint nor tinder. 

The miles home seemed interminable, yet 
not an hour had gone by when the slave 
was gone hot-foot for the master of the 
house, and the “ Hawk ” was skimming the 
waves Hall-ward. 


CHAPTER XIV. 


O UR preparations were soon made. I 
had to hurry to the island for our 
guns and some necessities. When I re- 
turned the little cortege was ready. Mrs. 
Rousby had been lifted on a mattress into 
the big wagon ; the carriage, an ox-cart 
heavily loaded, the slaves and Tom, all 
awaited me. 

At the big gate I whirled my horse me- 
chanically about to close it and had one 
quick, last look at Rousby Hall which I 
shall forever remember — the deserted house, 
the wheat fields, now brown with stubble, 
running to the water, with woodland and 
meadow slope on either side — and in that 
instant there glided into sight a British 
frigate. 

I went pounding on after Tom, calling 
to him, “ The fleet is in full sight in the 
harbor ! ” 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 187 

He pulled his horse so short he sunk back 
upon his haunches. 

“ My God ! ” he swore, and his face was 
as white as the ruffles of his shirt. 

“ Tom ! Tom ! ” I cried dismayed. 

But he only looked back at me with a face 
on which despair was writ. 

“ Barney ! ” 

“The warning!” Fools that we both 
were, in the moment of excitement and dan- 
ger we had forgotten our trust. 

“ I cannot leave them.” He looked at 
the little party ahead. “And Barney will 
believe it treason.” 

“ Pshaw,” I cried, “ what nonsense ! I 
will carry the news.” 

“ You!” 

“Why not?” 

“ Your horse — ” 

“ Is one of the best in the stables.” 

“You cannot leave them,” I panted, as 
we raced along to overtake the rest. “ I 
will turn off at the fork, for the river road. 
I am far lighter than you. I can ride faster.” 
I was wild for the adventure. 

We were nearly at the forks. Down the 


188 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


woody way inland I could see our little band 
hurrying on ; the other road, sandy and 
pine-bordered, curved upward. 

“ Go to Preston Manor,” Tom commanded. 
“ Tell Preston the British fleet is in the har- 
bor. He passes the warning. Ride for life 
or death ! ” 

I pulled my hunter sharply to the left ; 
some words followed me on my way, but I 
could catch only the sound and not the 
purport. 

How heavy the sand went ! The horse 
sank to his fetlocks in it and still it stretched 
on ; how hot the late breathless evening was 
in the still pines! How the horse labored 
and sweat as I urged him through the tire- 
some sand ! This must be bettered. I 
stopped at a little brook and let him, drink 
the veriest sip to refresh himself, then I 
pulled him to the footpath at the road’s 
edge and hastened on. The ground was 
firmer here ; by and by we got into higher 
country. We were further away from the 
river which made a bend to the south, while 
the road kept straight on. I rode up bold 
hills and cautiously down slippery slopes of 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


189 


yellow clay. Oak and hickory and gum, 
already flame-flecked, lined the way, and 
threw heavy shadows across the lonely road. 
I saw no living soul. Partridges with coveys 
nearly grown whirred up before my way, 
rabbits went scurrying to cover flicking their 
flags of truce, deer in the depths of the 
woods stood a moment at gaze and went 
trotting away. 

We came out again in the sand, toiled 
through it and past Middleham Chapel, and 
then I pulled to the left ; I struck a wretched 
road over which I had been once before, and 
which was the only way of the river-folk 
out to church, through thick woods where 
branches slapped me in the face, and bram- 
ble and wild rose crowded close to the road- 
side ; then the forest grew too dank and 
dense for undergrowth, paths and wood- 
roads turned here and there, and I was 
beset with fear of taking the by-road and 
losing the way. Once I did so, and floun- 
dering, slipping, sliding along the dreariest, 
ruttiest, steepest hill I ever rode down, I 
found myself before a wide, deep pond, 
from which meandered a slender stream. 


190 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


It was fair enough a sight, the pond gleam- 
ing in the fast waning light of sunset, the 
tinkling stream curving and bending through 
the moist meadowland that lay between the 
hills; but my horse was fair bemired in 
the soft clay at the foot of the hill and 
there was a wearisome height to climb again, 
and out to the road once more. The day 
grew too short for further failings. An- 
other such and night would be upon me 
in these deep mysterious woods, and Tom’s 
sickening fear might be backed by reason. 
No ! the warning must be given, for the 
country, for the Commodore, for Marshall. 

I hurried on. There on the right was the 
road to Preston Heights and this winding 
across the river flats was the way to the 
Manor. The stars were glimmering when 
I came out on it, but I could see likewise 
the glimmering of the candles in Mr. Pres- 
ton’s house. 

There was a sound of hurried footsteps 
on the porch when I came dashing up with 
the last spurt of speed my horse could give, 
for alarm dwelt in the air and every blast 
of it was a fear. 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 191 

“ Who is there ? ” called the deep voice of 
Mr. Preston. 

“ I ! ” I panted, “ from the harbor! ” 

“ What of it ? ” called a sudden sharp 
voice, and peering through the dusk I could 
see the slim lieutenant who had so angered 
me that day aboard of Barney’s vessel. 
The sight of him and the cool, insolent 
tone of his voice, even in his anxiety, made 
me as calm as he seemed to be. I straight- 
ened myself in my saddle and my words 
were as clear as if I, too, had worn that 
trapping upon my shoulder which shone on 
his even in the dusk. 

“ The British fleet is in the harbor,” I 
said stiffly. “ They had but rounded the 
Point when I hastened with the warning. 
You were to send it on,” I addressed myself 
to Mr. Preston. 

“ I will take it ! ” said the lieutenant 
shortly. “ How many sail were there ? 
What is their strength?” 

“ I know not,” and I felt hot with anger 
that I did not know, and could have clutched 
his throat for the exclamation that he made. 
“ They were but in sight, I did not stay to 
count,” I added sarcastically. 


192 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

“ Ah, and you are sure they entered,” he 
answered in a tone that matched my own. 

“ They would not have fled from the 
Hall — ” 

“Come, young men, come/’ put in Mr. 
Preston soothingly. “ Dismount,” to me, 
“ and rest ; you need not ride back before 
morning.” 

“ You will give me a guide, sir, at once,” 
cried the young officer. “ I must know it.” 

“ Know what ? ” 

“ Their strength, I must know it. What 
horses have you in the stable ? ” 

“ The best in the country.” 

“ Then must the best be ready for me, 
instantly, and another for a guide. I know 
not these bridle paths.” 

“ It was the Commodore’s commands,” 
said Mr. Preston with dignity, “ that the 
warning should be at once transmitted.” 

“ I shall be back ere daybreak and be 
gone at once.” He was hurrying to the 
stables. “ See that my boat be in readiness 
and some one to accompany me ! ” he called 
as he ran. 

“Joe! Joe!” called Mr. Preston to the 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


193 


slave who had taken my horse, “ saddle the 
two horses in the stables, go with that young 
man. Haste, or he will be off by himself ! ” 

In a trice they were gone, negro and man, 
into the darkness ; the sound of the hoof- 
beats on the road and the wash of the waves 
on the shore pulsed through the stillness of 
the summer’s night. 

Mr. Preston and I were left gazing in 
each others faces. “Well, perhaps ’tis 
best,” he said after a moment’s quiet ; and 
then he fell to questioning me of the swift 
event of that fateful day. But I had naught 
to tell. I had said it all at once. “ Where 
has Mr. Rousby taken his family?” he 
finally asked. 

“ Mr. Rousby is in Baltimore.” 

“ Ah ! ” sharply. 

“ There was most urgent business there. 
He left the household in Tom’s care.” 

Another exclamation I neither knew the 
meaning of nor liked. “ Where have they 
gone ? ” 

“ To Mrs. Rousby’ s cousins, up beyond 
the chapel.” 

“ Ah, a safe enough place, quiet and out 

13 


194 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


of the way. So Marshall guards the 
women,” he said, after a moment’s pause. 
“’Tis needful, ’t is needful, but so are 
soldiers.” 

I ground my teeth with anger, but there 
was not a word I could say. 

“ But what am I thinking of ? You are 
tired.” He opened the gate quickly to the 
narrow front yard. All this while we had 
been standing without where I had dis- 
mounted. “ You will spend the night with 
me. An old bachelor is ever glad of 
company.” 

His foot on the porch step, the old man 
turned to give some directions for my com- 
fort to the servants, but I caught him by 
the arm. 

“You will care for the horse,” I said. 
“ It is one of Mr. Rousby’s hunters. Send it 
to them if you can, and tell Tom — ” I 
broke off, I could not frame my message. 
“ The lieutenant will need some one to assist 
him with the boat, he said. I shall ac- 
company him.” 


/ 


CHAPTER XV. 


H AVING made my resolve and state- 
ment, I would not heed a word of 
Mr. Preston’s urging that I should go com- 
fortably to bed and sleep until I was needed. 

“ Monkton will not be back till near day- 
break. Sleep while you can. If you are 
going with him, you’ll need it.” 

“I am not sleepy, sir,” I assured him. 
I felt I had slept long enough and was at 
last wide awake. 

“ Monkton will have to rest, too ! ” 

I knew otherwise. When he returned it 
would be a flung bridle rein, a short word, 
and a run for the river and a hoisted sail. 
I would wait him on the porch with the 
sleeping dogs. 

“ You will at least have something to eat ? 
Come, the woman is signalling.” 

He took me by the arm and led me into 
the dining room, where a cold meal had been 
hastily spread at one end of the table. The 


196 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


candle gleam near my plate showed a red 
ham cut through its heart, a platter of cold 
fowl, and white bread and honey, and 
foaming milk. I did not know I was 
hungered until I saw the viands. Then I 
ate until my host beamed with pleasure. 

“ Ah, youth, youth ! ” he cried regretfully, 
and then as if he would not bemoan his old 
age, “ When I was a younger man I 
struck some good blows for my country.” 
Had I been anything of a listener he would 
have told me his tale of Revolutionary 
deeds, but I was rankly egotistic and saw 
only the present. Something he said, too, 
of white hairs and the fire of youth, but his 
words fell on heedless ears. My own wild 
resolve beat in my ears and thundered in 
my veins. It was the only sound I could 
heed ; and seeing this, doubtless, he left me 
to its voice, for by and by he gave me some 
directions about the young officer’s boat 
which lay at the wharf and in which he 
had sailed to Preston Manor for a friendly 
visit. And my supper finished, these last 
words said, he went with slow foot to his 
chamber. 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


197 


I flung myself on the bench porch to 
wait, though I was wild with impatience to 
be gone. All the languor, all the laziness of 
the past months, seemed withered, scorched, 
and burned forever in my wild intent on 
action. I felt as I lay on the hard bench, 
my head propped on my arm, my unseeing 
eyes wide open to the night, as if there were 
no deed of valor, writ or dreamt of, I could 
not do or would not. Visions of such things 
formed and reformed, passed by in gorgeous 
colorings and came again upon my vision, 
printed upon the soft dusk of the summer 
night. 

I saw nothing of its shadowy realities, 
neither the looming shrubbery, nor the 
gleam of the river, nor the pulsing stars. 
I heard none of the night sounds, no chirp- 
ing of katydids, nor soft trickling of dew- 
drops along the house-roof, nor even the 
murmur of the tide ; but I heard the first 
beat of the horses’ hoofs that pounded 
along the road to the Manor — heard and 
heeded. 

I sprang to my feet and was for a moment 
bewildered by the stiff soreness of my limbs. 


198 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

I had held one rigid posture all those hours. 
I reached for my gun, which I had leaned 
against the door- jamb, and then I was by 
the gate. The dog was barking madly. Mr. 
Preston, thinly clad, ran out into the porch ; 
but it was as I knew it would be. The 
lieutenant flung the rein to the negro. u All 
right, I have it ! ” he called, “ some one else 
had eyes. Come on ! ” He saw a figure in 
the dusk and guessed it to be some one 
waiting for him. 

“ I thank you,” he called back to Mr. 
Preston, who was striving to be heard above 
the barking of the dogs. “I must be 
gone ; ” and he ran out on the narrow wharf, 
I after him, and sprang in the boat, tied 
there at the end. 

“ Unfasten her. I T1 see to the sail. Gad ! 
the wind sets just right.” 

“ The tide, too ! ” I called gaily. 

“ Who ’s there, I thought — hm ! it *s no 
negro ! ” he cried, as coming closer, the sail’s 
rope in his hand, he caught the gleam of 
my face in the dark. 

“ No,” said I, “ I am going myself.” 

“ Faith ! ” still in astonishment. 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 199 

“To join the Commodore. He will en- 
list me.” 

“ That he will, I swear.” 

“ I am a good sailor,” I added, “ better 
than any of Mr. Preston’s negroes.” 

“The very man we want. My dear 
fellow,” he cried as if he strove to atone 
for his former intolerance, “ I am delighted. 
We ’ll make a man of you. ’T is what 
such youths as we are made for — war 
and adventure.” 

He flung the sail to her true course, fast- 
ened the rope, while I held the tiller. 

“ My dear fellow,” he repeated, stifling a 
yawn as he spoke, “ you ’ve had your rest. 
I am wearied to death.” 

“ Lie down in the boat’s bottom, it *s dry 
enough ! ” 

“ Even so, and here ’s a pillow for a 
soldier or a sailor any day.” He rolled his 
coat under his head. “You can keep her 
going?” he questioned sleepily. 

“ Until we find Barney. Where is he?” 

“ Nottingham ! ” 

“ A good sail ! ” 

“We ’ll make it ! 99 


200 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

" Flood tide — ” 

“ And a strong wind, I ’ll warrant, at day- 
break. I ’m confoundedly tired.” He gave 
a big yawn and by the time his mouth 
was well shut was sound asleep. So here I 
sat, my hand upon the tiller, our way set 
straight up the river. The darkness thick- 
ened and paled, a faint light showed across 
river and land, the sky reddened above the 
eastward pines, the sun rose in a golden 
ball and shone full on Monkton, asleep. 

“ Gad ! ” he cried, as he roused and raised 
himself on his elbow and stared first at me 
and then at the rocking boat, “ I was 
dreaming I was at home. Faith ! I ’ve had 
a night of it well-nigh; a few hours will 
serve a soldier well as ten any time. You 
must be tired.” 

“I? Oh, no!” 

“ You look fresh as a daisy.” 

He opened his ruffled shirt at his neck, 
rolled up his sleeves, and leaned over the 
boat’s edge to lave his face and hands. 

“ And now I feel like one,” he cried, dry- 
ing them with his handkerchief. “ Now 
I’ll relieve you” 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


201 


I stood up and stretched myself care- 
fully for fear of the small craft’s rocking. 

“ Where are we?” I asked. 

“ I do not know. We made good time ? ” 

“ Fairly.” 

“Then we should be abreast of — I 
thought so, look there!” 

I turned to where he pointed and saw the 
blackened ruins of a house and outbuild- 
ings. The chimneys stood sullen guard in 
the gray light above the ashes. 

“That is Mr. Alvey’s,” said the young 
officer. “ The British landed there, de- 
manded fifty hogsheads of tobacco — a for- 
aging party from the fleet besieging the 
Commodore at St. Leonard’s Creek,” he 
answered my questionings. “ It was all of 
Mr. Alvey’s shipping for the year. They got 
it, set fire to his house — ” He waved his 
hands; the blackened, deserted ruins told 
the rest. 

“ Where is he ? ” I questioned. 

Monkton shrugged his shoulders expres- 
sively. “ ’T is not the only story plainly writ,” 
he said significantly, “ but they came no 
higher. We passed the others in the night.” 


202 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

“ But Alvey — I had it of Mr. Preston — 
had but lately added to his own large 
household an orphaned babe and two small 
children — children of a destitute neighbor.” 

“ And still,” I cried, “ men sit still at 
home.” 

“ Nay, judge them fairly. A new con- 
vert,” he added slyly, “ is ever most hot in 
condemning others.” 

The shot was so close I needs must laugh, 
though I felt myself hot and reddened. “ I 
will follow your example,” I said to hide 
my confusion, as I threw off my coat and 
opened my shirt at the neck; and as I 
was hasty, I got a good mouthful of the 
water. “ Why, it ’s nearly fresh ! ” I cried. 

“ Far up.” 

“ ’T is time the fishermen were out,” I 
said, as I took my seat in the stern where 
I could best watch the river. “ I have 
been watching ever since dawn.” 

“ Oh, but you forgot. ’T is deserted about 
here.” Still we watched, but the river was 
deserted. The sun rose higher, the mist 
floated up from river and shore. We were 
above the wasted country, and we could 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


203 


see green fields of corn and white houses 
gleaming in orchards and level stretches of 
tobacco acres or shadowy woods. But we 
dared not land to give any warning. There 
was no time. We must give our dire news 
to the first boatman we met and trust him 
with the rest. We saw one fisherman, it 
was true, but it was a negro. We thought 
of the negro regiment and that secret 
underfear of the slave which beset us all, 
and we dared not trust him. 

Then passing by Marlborough we saw a 
little fleet of fishing boats. The wind, which 
had so befriended us, ruffled and roughened 
the water, and sent the white caps dancing 
along the current ; it was not a morning for 
good luck to the men who leaned, line in 
hand, watching the bobbing corks. But 
they looked content. The freshness of the 
August day was about them, and beyond 
gleamed the houses of the town, set in 
green. 

“ Hallo ! hallo ! ” I put my hands to my 
mouth and sent my voice across the water. 
I watched the man in the boat nearest 
me turn quickly, “ hallo ! ” and then I said 


204 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


slowly and insistently, so that each word 
should carry its full weight, “ The British 
— fleet — is — in — the harbor — coming — 
this — way ! ” 

I thrilled from head to foot as I shouted 
it, and yet I could but laugh as I saw the 
fellow jerk in his line and throw it, a fish 
dangling at the end, in the boat’s bottom, 
and seize his oars and row frantically land- 
ward. Each boat as he passed and hailed 
it followed ; only one made to intercept us. 

“ Hey, there ! ” called the man in this as 
soon as he was near enough to be heard ; 
“ how do you know the British are 
there ? ” 

“ Because we have seen them ! ” I shouted 
back. 

“ How do you know they are coming up 
the river ? ” 

“ Because Barney is here ! ” We still 
skimmed on our way, and the man, plying 
his oars, followed us. “ And they are after 
him. Any jackass might know that.” 

The man laughed good-naturedly. “ They 
tried to get him before,” Monkton bawled, 
“ but they could n’t do it. Now they have 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 205 

gotten the whole fleet — ships from Ber- 
muda and all.” 

“ What?” 

“ The fleet, reinforced, is in pursuit.” 

“ Anything I can do ? ” called the man. 

“ Light out with your people ; and, yes, 
give us your snack if you brought it 
along.” 

The man grinned, and, opening a little 
box fashioned under the seat in the stern of 
his boat, brought out a package. “ Catch 
it ! ” he cried to Monkton, who was nearest. 

“ 'Fore the Lord,” cried he gaily, “ but 
here ’s luck ! ” He unwrapped the package 
of cold corn-pone and ham, and then with 
just the same look I saw on his face when 
he asked me to join the service, he called to 
the man, “ Why are you not in the army ? ” 

“ There *s none about here to be with,” 
said the man slowly, and he spoke the truth. 
In Virginia the militia was well organized, 
fighting everywhere the small parties landed ; 
in Southern Maryland the British had met 
little resistance. So near to Washington 
and the central government, they were so 
commanded and counter-commanded, so in- 


206 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

fected with the indecision there, that men 
scarce knew what to do. 

But Monkton was ready with an answer 
on the instant. “ Come up to Nottingham. 
I 'll show you one,” he cried. 

“ Come on ! ” I waved him laughingly. 

"I’m coming,’' he said with sudden de- 
cision, as he put his boat about. “ I 'll be 
there before you ! ” he called back. 

“ No, you won't ! ” I shouted. 

“ It 's nearer by land ! ” 

“ No, it is n't ! ” 

“ Is it ? ” I queried anxiously. 

“ Unless his horse can swim a creek.” 

“ But if he should forestall us ? ” 

“ It will be all the same ; he knows too 
little.” 

“ We must beat him ! ” I vowed. 

It was not easy doing it, but we swore 
we would. The wind died down, the sun 
grew stifling hot, the tide ran languidly. 
Soon it would be dead against us. 

We stripped to our shirts, tore off our 
stocks, and opened our shirts wide. The sail 
flapped idly ; we must bend to the oars, 
which lay in the boat's bottom. What 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


207 


work it was ! I had sailed and rowed for 
two years for my pleasure ; now I rowed for 
some wild purpose I could not name even 
to myself, and also because I would not miss 
a stroke in time to that other oarsman who 
sat by my side and pulled manfully. 

It was noon, high noon and hot, when 
we came in sight of Barney’s fleet lying 
peacefully before the town of Nottingham, 
the sides of the barges and the masts of the 
vessels mirrored in the water, which ran 
unruffled from bank to bank. 


CHAPTER XVI. 


1 LEANED against the cabin’s side, while 
Monkton was talking eagerly to the 
Commodore below. The sun glared down 
on deck and water. There was not a 
shadow anywhere. The five or six hundred 
marines packed on barge and schooner 
panted in the heat. The shine of the metal 
from the guns was fairly blinding. Canoe 
and yawl and rowboat at the wharf showed 
where many had gotten shore-leave and 
taken refuge from the heat. Not even 
a breath of wind fanned my cheek and the 
water lay like glass, inert and shining. 

Suddenly I heard the pushing back of 
chairs, and the Commodore came lightly up 
the few steps of the companion-way. He 
had already greeted me heartily when we 
first clambered aboard. Now he came up 
to me quickly. Monkton, following, was 
regarding me with laughter in his eyes. 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 209 

“ Jack,” said the Commodore, “ you can 
ride?” 

“ Fairly well.” 

“ Which is more than most of my men 
can do.” 

“I have bestrode a hunter myself, sir,” 
said Monkton languidly. 

“ Tut ! you know I need you here. He has 
been begging me — ” He broke off suddenly. 
“ You are tired ! ” 

“ Not a whit.” I was standing erect, 
looking him full in his face, giving him gaze 
for gaze. I knew he wanted something of 
me, and I wanted to know its nature. 

“ You have ridden, how many miles was 
it ? and sailed or rowed forty more.” 

“I have never thought sailing hard 
work.” 

“ There spoke a tar ! ” 

“ I should like to be one of yours.” 

“ And that you shall, I swear ! ” 

“ I have come to enlist in the marines,” 
I insisted. Monkton turned away to hide 
his smile. 

“ For any duty ? ” 

“ Any.” 


14 


210 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

“ At any moment ? ” 

“ Now.” 

“ The very stuff we want ! Think you 
you can start now with despatches for the 
Commander-in-chief ? ” 

“ Winder?” 

“ Who else ! ” 

“ Where is he ? ” 

“At the Woodyard.” 

I looked toward Monkton, who answered 
the question of my eyes. “ Fifteen miles, 
about,” he answered. 

“ Where can I get a horse ? ” 

“ At the village there.” 

I held out my hand. “ Give me the 
despatches.” 

“ Heard you ever better ? ” called the 
Commodore delightedly. “ But man, I ’m 
not sending you off without food.” 

“ I can get something to eat in the village, 
while I wait for the horse.” 

“ You need some rest.” 

“ Good-bye,” said I in reply. 

“ Here, leave your gun, you T1 not need 
it ; it will make your riding heavy. Monk- 
ton will keep it, and when you come to 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


211 


reclaim it I’ll give you” — he paused to 
give his words full weight — “I will make 
you an officer in my command.” 

“ And I shall add to it, with the Commo- 
dore’s permission, the uniform I wore when 
I held such rank,” said Monkton laughingly. 
Barney must have already told him his 
intention. 

“ Here are the despatches. This order at 
the village tavern will procure you a horse.” 
The Commodore took an open letter from 
his pocket. “ Monkton, here, has been 
begging for the service, but I need him, 
and then he must suggest you. Is this 
correct ? ” 

I blushed hotly and looked at Monkton, 
but he would not meet my gaze. I glanced, 
perforce, down the open sheet I held in my 
hand, and this was what I read : 

Nottingham, August 19, 1814. 

Two of my officers have this moment arrived 
from the mouth of the Patuxent and bring the 
enclosed account. I hasten to forward it to you. 
The Admiral said he would dine in Washington 
on Sunday, after having destroyed the flotilla. 

Joshua Barney. 


212 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


One 80 or 90 gnn ship, flag at main. 

Four 74 gun ships, one flag at mizzen. 

Six frigates. 

Ten ships, about 32 guns. 

Five small ships. 

Two brigs. 

One large schooner, 16 guns. 

Thirteen large bay craft. 

A large number of small boats are now under 
way standing up the Patuxent, with a determi- 
nation to go to the city of Washington ; so they 
said yesterday. 


Monkton was a good scout. I handed 
the Commodore back the report. “ Keep 
it! stay ! ” He went hurriedly back to the 
cabin. 

“ Where did you learn it all ? ” I whis- 
pered. 

“ I told you I met some one who had 
eyes and ears,” he whispered back, grinning 
at my surprise. 

“ Here ! ” The Commodore was by my 
side, the letter which he had sealed in his 
hand. “ And remember, you are to return 
with his answer at once.” 

“ I may see him ashore, sir ? ” 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 213 

The Commodore gave his assent, and bade 
me a cheery good-bye, as we hastened to 
the boat we had left at the vessel’s side. 

I saw many strange faces looking down 
at us curiously as we rowed swiftly by the 
flotilla, and once there was a shout. I 
looked up to see my old friend the Cap- 
tain watching us, agape with astonishment, 
but I could only call back his greeting. 

As I sprang on the wharf, Monkton called : 
“ See that you win your uniform ! ” 

I waved my hand as I ran clattering 
along the worn planking of the wharf. 
Already I saw the shining of my brass but- 
tons and the gleam of my epaulettes. 

About the inn the marines ashore were 
loitering idly. They looked up astonished 
at my hasty entrance, but I had no message 
for them or any others, only my order to 
the host. “See that the horse be gotten 
ready instantly ! ” I demanded, “ and get me 
some cold food. No ! something I can eat 
in my fingers here where I am standing.” 

“ The dinner is but lately finished, if 
there is aught on the table.” I saw the 
dining room to the left, went in hastily, 


214 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

and picked up some cold fowl and bread, 
but by the time I had taken my first bite 
I heard the quick hoof-beats of my steed. 
The sailors burst into laughter as I ran 
past them, the food clutched in one hand, 
and sprang upon his back. 

“All right, my fine fellows,” thought 
I, “ laugh away ! ” As for me, I cared 
for nothing save my adventure; for there 
is one thing youth does — be it to advan- 
tage or disadvantage, it pursues one end 
with fervid energy, blind to all else. The 
town to me was but a blur of glaring 
streets and tree-shadowed cottages, and then 
running straight and white and hot, the 
road. 

Along it I fled, urging my horse to the 
utmost. When he should be spent I re- 
solved to press another and yet another 
to my service, so that I might keep to the 
topmost speed. 

“ Better we should use them than they 
fall into hands of the enemy,” had said 
the Commodore. 

“ It is rumored they have seven hundred 
aboard their convoys,” Monkton had added, 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 215 

and I resolved to get what good was possi- 
ble out of those I found. 

Down sandy stretches and clayey hills, 
across stream and marsh and up hill 
again we raced. So far I had gotten my 
course straight from the village ; but when 
I paused at a forked road in the pine wood 
wondering which way was mine, I waited 
for a traveller I heard speeding down the 
way. When I saw him I rose in my 
stirrup and shouted. It was the fisherman 
on his way to Nottingham. 

He set me aright and on again I went, 
but more slowly. The horse was fresh 
from pasture and was soft ; the lather was 
white upon his flanks, and his breathing 
came hard. I began to look anxiously for 
some house near the roadside, as I dreaded 
the loss of time down the long lanes and 
back again. 

Never could there have been a country 
more unprepared for war than that through 
which I rode. The long fields of Indian 
corn rustled in the high winds, their yellow- 
ing tassels tossing to and fro, or the green 
leaves of the tobacco plant waved over acre 


216 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


after acre. At the first house I found near 
enough to the roadside for my purpose the 
people had heard some rumor from the fish- 
erman or some one he had met. 

“ Are the British in the river ? ” was the 
cry that met me. 

The Commodore had said nothing to me 
as to my keeping silence, and I had met 
none that hot summer’s afternoon, still I 
scarce knew whether to proclaim my news 
or not. 

“ They are,” I said briefly. 

“ There ! how long ? ” 

“ They are coming up the river. Hold ! ” 
for at that they turned and were making 
off, every one of them. 

“ I need a horse — ” 

“ Help yourself ! ” waving to the pasture. 

“ You must care for this ! ” I spoke to 
deaf ears. Far from the river as they were, 
such fear had permeated all this Southern 
peninsula from the tale of the deeds along 
the Potomac that no thought was left to 
this household save flight. Men, women, and 
children, slaves and cattle, they would take 
to the woods. I pressed a negro into ser- 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 217 

vice, and made him help me catch a beast 
and fasten my saddle on it. 

“ Look after this till I return,” I bade 
him. 

“ Lord, massah ! ” he answered, “ we ’se 
gwine dribe ebery one o’ dem down to de 
woods fo’ night.” 

“ Leave this one here ! I 'll get him and 
turn the one loose I ’ve taken.” 

But it was a sorry beast I had caught. 
His gait jolted me sorely and there was no 
speed in him. There was a handsome large 
house a mile or two down the road, and I 
resolved to change. I had to tell the 
planter the cause of my haste. He was a 
fine, florid old man and heard me half 
scornfully. 

“The British march on Washington! 
Pooh ! they would not dare. There is a 
horse at your disposal, certainly. De- 
spatches to the Commander-in-chief ? ” He 
paused on the stately steps of his handsome 
house and looked me over keenly. “ Hm ! 
a wise general he has shown himself. Ob- 
stacles — ” to some murmur of mine, “ ob- 
stacles are to be overcome! If Washington 


218 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


should have thought of obstacles — ” Here 
was another hero of the Revolution, and I 
was fuming to be gone. 

“ Here is your mount, sir, a better I take 
it than that ! ” and I left him eying his 
poor neighbor s steed disdainfully. 

But the mount he gave me was well 
worth praise. He bore me bravely to 
camp, though I was so wearied I was ready 
to tumble from the saddle when I got there ; 
and having delivered the despatches, my 
one thought was for rest. I was going 
back as soon as I had stretched and eased my 
limbs. The answer would be ready in an 
hour. I am sure it was ready on the 
instant, and the “ hour ” was simply grace 
to me and my steed. 

In the hour, then, we were gone — fading 
daylight, dusk, and darkness now. I rode 
down to the poor neighbor’s field, turned in 
the beast who had served me so well, trust- 
ing to luck to take him home some way, 
caught my horse I had gotten at Notting- 
ham and blessed the instinct that guided 
him swiftly home while I nodded in the 
saddle. 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


219 


But when I tumbled into a rowboat at 
Nottingham wharf and pulled out to the 
flotilla, looming vague and immense upon 
the river running dark under the starlight, 
I was wide awake and tingling with nervous 
excitement. The twinkling light on barge 
and schooner shone fairy-like, the watches 
at the vessels’ sides called out as I rowed 
past them, but I called back “ Despatches 
for the Commodore ! ” and hastened on. 
He and Monkton, awaiting me, had heard 
the calls and answers, and were at his 
vessel’s side ; and his “ Well done ! ” and his 
hand clasp were guerdon for any deed. 

“ I shall return your gun,” said Monkton 
laughingly, “it is in the cabin ! ” 

We followed the Commodore, who had 
seated himself hastily at the table, pulled 
the candle nearer him, and broken the seal 
of his letter. There were only a few lines, 
but he laid it down heavily and sank his 
head upon his hands. Monkton and I 
shrank back from the circle of the candle 
light. 

Barney pulled the letter towards him 
again, as if to confirm its ill tidings, and 


220 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

his face settled into stern lines as he read 
again. 

“ What is it, sir ? ” ventured Monkton, 
who was devotedly attached to him and was 
treated with much freedom. 

“ I must land my men,” said the Com- 
modore bitterly, “ and march towards Wash- 
ington the instant I have news of the 
enemy’s landing. The flotilla must be driven 
into shoal water and blown up.” The most 
senseless order of the many senseless ones 
of that month! The one foe the British 
feared must be destroyed, removed from 
their path. 

“Well,” he repeated, as he rose to his 
feet unsteadily, “ so be it ! ” 

He made for the stair, but touched me as 
he went. “ Ah ! ” he said slowly, “ Jack ! ” 
and then with all the warm geniality of his 
manner, “ You ’ve earned your title, sir ! ” 
Earned it, I knew even then it was but his 
warm heart prompted him. “ We ’ll see 
service even if it is land service, and we ’ll 
show them how our sailors can fight ashore 
when that day comes. See that you do 
your part, lad, though I doubt it not, I 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 221 

doubt it not. I told you from the first — ” 
and so talking we went up on the deck, 
and we heard no further words save of 
good-will and cheer from him that night. 
But long after I was supposed to have 
been sleeping, and should have been were I 
not wrestling with the nervousness of my 
great fatigue, I heard him pacing to and 
fro on the deck, keeping a bitter watch. 

Destroy his boats ! It had taken a win- 
ter’s work to fit them ; on his first cruise 
he found they needed yet more work upon 
them, and had put back to Baltimore again, 
and then had had but two months’ success- 
ful command over them. Now they must 
be destroyed ! 


CHAPTER XVII. 


T HREE days later we were at Bla- 
densburg. We had landed on the 
twenty-first, marched and counter-marched 
for two days, had been stifled with dust and 
blistered with heat, and had heard the dis- 
tant booming that told the destruction of 
our fleet. The night before we had camped 
near Washington where the General was for 
stranding us. 

All rumors were rife and the country was 
in a very panic of mad fear. The enemy 
marched, we heard, this way, then that; 
but by the morning of the twenty-fourth 
all agreed he marched for Washington. 
The Commodore and his men were posted 
to guard one way and blow up the bridge 
if needful, and at Bladensburg, some six 
miles away on the post road, the soldiers 
from Baltimore stood guard. 

In the mad whirl of that morning we 
stood passive. Fugitives rushed past us, 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


223 


men with their families fleeing from the 
city, carriages and carts and men afoot, 
volunteer soldiers racing down the road to 
Bladensburg, all Winder’s force — and we 
were stranded here. 

The President and some of his cabinet 
came hurrying by. Barney on his great bay 
horse forced himself close up to them. “ Is 
it true the enemy march by the road to 
Bladensburg ? ” he demanded. 

One of the party assented. 

“ Then why should I be left here with 
five hundred of the best fighting men to do 
what any damned corporal with five could 
do ? I have your consent to move on ? ” he 
demanded, as there was no answer. 

It was given curtly. 

“ Deploy there, to the right ! Fours for- 
ward, march ! ” 

The cheer we gave could be heard in the 
streets of Washington. Before we were in 
sight of Bladensburg we heard the volley- 
ing of loud, sharp firing — the fight was 
on. Barney, reconnoitring before us, came 
thundering back. “ Forward on a run ! ” he 
cried, and the command ran along the line. 


224 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


“Halt!” We were on the post road and, 
looking down, could see the hills, the river, 
the village, and the fight. Our guns were 
in the middle of the highway, part of our 
men there and part to the right. I was 
on the right. I had donned my uniform 
before we landed, and been inordinately 
proud of it. By the end of the first day 
I was worn out with the duties it meant 
and my consequent endeavors to find them 
out and keep them up. By the end of the 
second day I was so dustied and grimed 
I had not even a thought of it, and now 
I was so eager for the fight I had for- 
gotten even myself. 

I dashed my arm across my face to wipe 
off the sweat so that I could see. Barney 
had dismounted and was himself pointing 
the guns. Down at the foot of the hills 
was a narrow bridge. A stream of redcoats 
was crossing it. There was a sharp fight 
with some of our men in a fringe of willows, 
but they were driven back; the redcoats 
followed, shouting. But now it was our 
men pushing them back, and the guns of the 
Baltimore artillery, opening on the bridge, 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


225 


strewed it with dead and dying. This in the 
space of a few minutes ; the battle was not 
up to us ? nor had we had time for readiness. 
The men were panting from their run. 
Barney, the guns pointed, sprang back upon 
his horse. 

“ Where is the Commodore, the Com- 
modore ? ” a man called, running by us. 

I was in the first rank. “ There ! ” I 
cried. 

He whirled, gave me a lightning glance, 
and ran off. In a second he was back to 
me. “ Jack ! ” he called quickly. 

“ Rob ! ” It was all I could gasp. There 
was a sharp command. The British had 
rushed again across the bridge, forced the 
line; the fight was up to us. Barney’s 
guns swept the road with terrible force. I 
heard the voice of Captain Miller, who com- 
manded our division. The men about me 
were taking aim ; I did likewise. I fired 
when they fired, reloaded, fired again. I 
heard cries to right and left, but had no 
time to turn that way. Rockets were 
booming and bursting on the left ; I scarce 
heeded them. We were closer in the press 

15 


226 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

to our Commodore. “ My God ! ” he cried, 
“ they are in full retreat.” 

“ Who ? ” I demanded of Monkton, who 
was near him. 

“ The militia — the whole field.” 

“ Close up ! ” thundered the Commodore. 

Our guns were at it, sweeping down the 
road by which the enemy came. They de- 
ployed to the left across the field where our 
forces had been. The Commodore imme- 
diately ordered an attack by our force, and 
we drove them before us across a ravine 
between the rolling hills. Then we came 
back to our guns. 

A bullet whizzed by my cheek across my 
shoulder. I whirled in wonder. On a hill- 
side above us I caught a gleam of scarlet. 
A small force stationed there was being 
driven out ; that was the last of the Ameri- 
cans on the field, all the rest were in full 
flight. I pressed close to the Commodore, 
he must know. Just as I reached him a 
bullet, singing from behind us, dropped his 
horse ; he sprang from him as he fell. A 
bullet struck him in the thigh. Monkton 
and I caught him. The Captain, my old 




















































































% 






























JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 227 

friend, and some other officers closed about 
us. “ Give — the — order — to — retreat ! ” 
the Commodore gasped. 

We were already in retreating order. 
Even with one of us on either side, we felt 
him staggering. The Captain and one of 
the others put their hands under his limbs 
and strove to lift him up and carry him 
thus, but the blood gushed out violently. 

“Lay me down, gentlemen, and leave 
me.” 

Not one of us heeded him. 

“Lay me here, under this tree. I can 
stand it no longer.” 

We laid him under a great tree. A 
spring gushed out from a bank a few yards 
away. I saw the longing in his eyes, and 
sprang to it and filled my cap — it was all 
I had. 

“ If you will, sir,” I begged, as I knelt 
by him. Monkton lifted his head and he 
drank eagerly. Then he turned his head 
to see the field. As for us, we stood with 
our backs toward it. Not one of us had 
a thought for anything but our wounded 
commander. 


228 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

“ You must leave me,” lie cried, his glance 
quickening as he looked. “ I command it ! 
The British will care for me.” 

Some one seized me by the arm. “ Come,” 
they said, panting. The Captain and the 
other officers moved off slowly. I stood 
rooted, spite of the urging at my side. 

“ Monkton ! ” said the Commodore. 

“ No, sir, I will not ! ” 

“ Jack ! ” 

“ I will see to him ! ” said that voice in 
my ear, and I felt myself dragged away, 
blinded with tears, dumb, resentful, strug- 
gling, urged on, stumbling across the 
wounded, looking down upon the faces of 
the dead and dying, until I was verily mad 
with awe and fear, and ran and ran faster 
than the voice there at my elbow urging 
me on. I knew it now, it was Rob ; where 
he had come from or how I had not even a 
thought of as we ran. 

A riderless horse swept by us; Rob 
caught at him, he sprang aside. I caught 
the strands of his flowing mane. Rob 
had him. He sprang astride, I behind 
him; one arm around him, we made for 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


229 


the woods. I took one lightning look back 
at wounded men and dying men and flee- 
ing men, and then we were dashing under 
the trees and crashing through the under- 
growth. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 


R OB !” I cried a half-hour later, “ stop ! ” 
We were alone in the heart of the 
forest. The beast stumbled sadly. I slid 
from his back and threw myself face down- 
wards on the dank mould. 

“ Come, lad.” How the word went through 
me, it was Rob’s old term ; and then as if 
to turn my thoughts to things near at hand, 
“ There is a spring hard by. I swear I ’m 
half dead of thirst ! ” 

He leaned over and tried to turn my face 
upward. “ Leave me alone,” I demanded 
stubbornly. 

“ All right ! ” he called back cheerily as 
he went, taking me at my word. “ I ’ll 
call you when I find the water ! ” And he 
walked away, the horse stumbling after 
him. 

As for me, no words could tell my bitter- 
ness. I had not even thought of failure or 
defeat, and one so ignominious as this had 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


231 


been past belief ; and then of myself, my 
wild panic, my thought of nothing the last 
half-hour but safety, my own safety, noth- 
ing, no one else — I buried my face deeper 
in the mould, and man as I had begun to 
feel myself, shook with the great tearless 
sobs that seem to tear one asunder. The 
wild excitement and exhilaration and ambi- 
tion that had gone like wine to my head 
fell away from me, turned to the lees of 
drunkenness. I was as one who wakens 
suddenly from a gay debauch to find his 
heart like lead within him and the taste of 
ashes on his lips. 

We had lost ; the capital of our country 
lay at the enemy’s mercy. The President 
and his cabinet were in full flight, and our 
Commodore lay desperately wounded. The 
sight of him as he fell, the look of his face, 
the wild cries of anguish, the shouting of 
the marines, the bullets whizzing and snap- 
ping about us, were burned in my brain and 
scorched upon my eyes. Shut them tight 
and turn my face close to the mould of 
many winters and summers, I could see 
naught else. 


232 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

The anguish of those moments hardened 
me as nothing else could have done. I felt 
unutterably older as I turned my head upon 
my arm. Shadow and sunlight flickered 
down from the green screen overhead upon 
the forest depths. A hare upon her form 
not far away was watching me with great 
liquid eyes, a doe and her fawn trotted into 
sight and went leaping away ; and I was 
aware, by and by, that the evening wind 
was singing softly in the treetops and that 
the sky above was blue. Rob had called 
me once, twice. When I heard his voice 
again I got to my feet. 

I followed the sound of his call and found 
him in a little ravine between the wooded 
hills, from which the spring gushed out and 
went trickling away in the shadowed forest 
depths. He sat hunched up, his moody 
eyes watching the brooklet’s flow. He gave 
me one sharp glance and then looked the 
other way. 

I think the shame we felt, both of us, 
was the keenest we ever knew, when I 
threw myself on the damp earth by his 
side. 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 233 

There was a great furrow down Rob's 
forehead and his eyes were bloodshot. I 
asked the only question that came to me 
after a heavy silence. 

“ How did you find me?” 

“ I knew where you were. I had been 
fighting with your men. When they broke, 
every man of them, at the very first — Lord 
knows I ’m not a soldier, I can drive a horse 
or — I can fire a gun, too." 

“ I did not know you were a soldier," I 
said wearily. 

“ I enlisted two months ago," he answered 
curtly. “ When they were racing every 
man of them, anywhere, off the field, I 
threw myself in with your men. When 
you began your retreat," he added after 
a while, “I was close to you. I saw the 
Commodore when he was struck. I fol- 
lowed when you tried to bear him off the 
field." 

This was all we had to talk of, and the 
silence fell heavily upon us once more. 

By and by Rob burst out, “ It was the 
rockets ! " 

“ Rockets ! " He sat up erect. Any- 


234 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

thing was better than this awful, sickening 
stillness. 

“You could not see our position,” he 
began briskly. “ There was the village on 
the other side the river, we were on the 
hills this side. We got there the night 
before. We were worn out. There was 
a false alarm in the night. We stood under 
arms two hours. When day did come we 
had nothing to eat but musty flour and salt 
beef. Then they came straggling in, the 
others. We were about eight hundred, the 
regiments from Baltimore.” Rob went on 
with more animation, as if it were a relief 
to pour out his grievance in talk. 

“ In the morning two regiments of the 
Maryland militia arrived, some seven hun- 
dred men ; they had marched sixteen miles 
to reach us, then some two hundred and 
forty men from the country about. Later 
in the day the soldiers from Washington. 
The county militia was over here in the 
corner between the Washington turnpike 
and the one from Georgetown — that’s 
where the trouble began. 

“ You should have seen the deadly quiet 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


235 


of the village and the road beyond. Not 
a leaf stirring down there in the willow 
thicket, the river running stilly, shimmers 
of heat over the village and fields. Our eyes 
strained on the road there down the hill. I 
kept thinking how I ’d like to come, horses 
prancing, bells jingling, and maybe a horn — 
how the sound of it would have echoed ! — a 
horn to my lips, blowing a rattling tune to 
wake up the folks at the inn ; but faith, it 
was a different tune we heard. 

“ It was noon when they came in sight, 
and when they got the range of us and their 
rockets were bursting around us the horses 
were unmanageable, the militia broke, that 
began it — you saw the rest.” 

But as for my seeing, I had not a distinct 
memory of anything but firing and loading, 
hearing commands and obeying them, then 
those last moments around Barney, and 
flight. 

Where was the broken army ? Where 
were the flotilla men, the regiments from 
Baltimore, the militia ? It seemed impossi- 
ble we should be shut away from them all 
as if we were in the heart of the world 


236 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


alone ; yet so we might have been, and the 
evening closed about us, as we lay there ex- 
hausted. 

The dusk thickened to black darkness 
under the great trees ; an owl began to hoot 
close at hand. I felt I should cry aloud. I 
could not stand it. 

“ You have a tinder-box ? ” I asked Rob. 

“ Yes.” 

I fumbled about feeling for the fagots, 
strewn thickly around. “ Here, start a 
light !” 

“ Zounds, that looks cheery ! ” 

“ See if we can find some dead branches. ,, 

“ By the cart load ! ” 

We built a fire up in the little dell, where 
it could do no damage. 

"It’s too hot to sit near it!” I ex- 
claimed, as the red embers began to give 
out heat. 

We put the stream between it and us. 

u It puts heart in one ! ” cried Rob with 
something of the old-time ring in his voice. 
“ Zounds ! there ’s no use to mope like 
owls.” 

“ We T1 never find our way out to-night,” 
I said. 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 237 

“ Mope like owls,” repeated Rob. “ Lord, 
there ’ll be another fight and we ’ll live to 
see it.” 

“ Another fight ! ” I had already thought 
all things done. 

“ Hm, the hottest yet ! ” 

“ Where ?” I cried, with the first rebound 
of feeling I had felt. 

“ Baltimore ! ” 

“ You think — ” 

“ Pshaw ! I know. They hate us worse 
than the devil.” Rob chuckled at the 
thought. “What do you think they call 
us? I heard it at the tavern — ‘ a nest of pri- 
vateers,* and ‘the great despository of the 
hostile spirit of the United States against 
England ; ’ there are long words for you. 

“ The next blow will be struck there ! ” 
he added in quick, brisk tones. “We’ll 
find our way out to-morrow,” he said after 
a while. “We ’ll hasten there at once.” 

But I got up to trim the fire ; I had other 
thoughts. The vision of what I would do 
had formed in my mind, crystallized on the 
instant. I was going for Tom somehow, 
and together we would go to Baltimore’s 


238 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

defence. This was his chance and mine. 
I felt quite calm, even cheerful, now I saw 
a future and deeds to be done in it. I fixed 
the fire, roamed about for more wood and 
came back to Rob's side. The talk of 
Baltimore had set me thinking of the days 
I spent there, the Golden Horse tavern, the 
meeting-house. 

“ Rob," I said quickly, as the idea flashed 
through my mind, “ I thought you a 
Quaker." 

“They will have none of me," he an- 
swered soberly. 

“Why?” asked I in astonishment, re- 
membering their old friendliness. 

“ Because I enlisted ! ” 

“ Pshaw ! And Ruth ? " 

“We quarrelled that very day. I have n't 
seen her since," he added, his eyes fixed 
gloomily on the leaping flames. I knew 
what he saw there. I saw it, too — a sum- 
mer’s stillness brooding over the silent 
gathering in the wide, high-ceilinged meet- 
ing-house, thoughtful faces on either side, 
men or women, and amidst the women a 
slender form, gray clad, gray bonneted, a 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 239 

clear pink cheek and drooping lashes just 
showing between the bonnet’s sides. 

I could not comfort him, but I slipped 
closer along the ground, so that I could put 
my hand on his knee ; and that was all we 
said that night until I told him I was dead 
for sleep. We both slept the heavy sleep 
of the exhausted there in the little dell, the 
fire dying lower and lower, the brooklet 
singing louder and louder, and far, very far 
overhead the gleam of a star between the 
gently tossing branches. 


CHAPTER XIX. 


I WAS a better woodsman than Rob, and 
then, moreover, he would listen to my 
advice even when, a heartsick boy, I came 
with him on the long journey from Boston. 
So now when I said, “ Suppose we follow 
the stream,” he was willing to heed me. 

It was gray dawn here in the woods, and 
while we were refreshed by sleep, we were 
so hungered we felt we must find civilization 
soon. I went ahead, following the broaden- 
ing stream, and Rob followed with the 
bridle of the horse, hobbling near us in the 
night, over his arm. When the daylight 
brightened, our feet were in lush grass, and 
here and there the cardinal flower showed 
scarlet in the green ; but after a bit the way 
grew wild and tangled. 

“ Rob,” I declared, as we paused at the 
edge of a tangle of dogwood and black- 
berry vines and bramble, “ I am afraid this 
is the wrong way out.” 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


241 


Before he could answer me, the horse be- 
hind him raised his head, sniffed the air 
eagerly, and neighed loudly. A neigh an- 
swered him, another and another. 

Rob threw back his curly head and 
laughed. “ This way ! ” he called, as he 
began to break his way through the under- 
growth. There, hobbled in a little glade, 
were some six or seven horses. 

“ Some poor fellow has hidden 'em well,” 
he cried, “ grass and running water and a 
way no one could find. Help yourself.” 

I stood for a moment, not knowing what 
he meant. Then I laughed aloud as I untied 
the withes from the foot of a slim gray mare 
and sprang astride of her. There was a 
rutty, faintly marked way hither, and fol- 
lowing this we came to a little used wood 
road; the rest was easy. In an hour we 
came out upon a broad highway, and, after 
some hard riding, upon a turnpike road. 

“ This is the post road,” Rob declared. 
“Some ten miles further, if I remember 
aright, lies the Stag Inn — a tavern, lad, 
think of it ! Come on ! ” 

I rode on by his side thoughtfully. I was 
16 


242 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

trying to untangle the memory of some de- 
scription of the roads hereabouts. “At a 
big pine standing alone at the edge of the 
woods a road forks off, running down to the 
peninsula ! At a big pine ! ” What was 
that great tree lifting its branches ahead ? 
And here a narrow ribbon of a road branched 
off. At its mouth I drew rein. “ Rob,” I 
said firmly, “I’m going down for Marshall.” 

“ What, the — ” Rob shut his lips firmly. 

“ Will you wait for us at the Stag Inn ? ” 

“No! ” he blazed. 

“We would be there to-morrow night.” 

“ If he would come ! ” scornfully. 

“ He is coming.” 

Rob looked at me for a second keenly. 

“ Well, maybe you can bring him. You 
are getting a way about you, lad.” 

“ A way ? ” 

“A way of having your way.” He 
laughed shortly. 

“ Where will you wait for me, then ? ” 
My horse was restive at the restraint, and 
snorting and kicking viciously at the flies 
on her haunches, and talking was not easy. 

“ At the Golden Horse.” 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


243 


“ So be it. I ’ll join you there/’ 

“ If you are not going on a fool’s errand. 
Come, lad, Baltimore is not so far away.” 

“ No. I left him before ; he did not 
know — ” 

“ You did ? ” Bob understood at once, 
no need to finish the sentence. I told him 
briefly what else there was to tell him of 
my adventure. 

“Well! well!” he said, “perhaps ’t is 
best. I’ll look out for you. Mind you 
come anyhow, anyhow ! ” he was calling 
after me, for my horse was already spring- 
ing along the narrow dirt road. 

As we went on, and as the heat of the 
day waxed stronger, there was something 
stifling in it. The way was solitary. Not 
a house did we pass ; now and then a road 
opened in the woods, but I knew not if it 
led to any habitation, and hungered as I 
was, I must keep to the highway. Although 
the sun shone hot and glaring, the atmos- 
phere was thick and yellowish. The horse 
was a foam of lather, and the sweat rolled 
down my face. I rolled up my coat and 
put it behind me. I loosened my shirt. 


244 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


The horse would go scarcely out of a walk. 
When we struck the woodland the leaves 
hung motionless, their silvery sides up- 
turned ; there was not a call of the birds, 
nor hum of insect life, nor any living beast 
to cross our pathway. 

Thicker and thicker grew the air. The 
fields when we came out of the woodland 
seemed shut in with yellowish pall, that 
thickened and narrowed the line of vision, 
until I was near to a hut by the roadside 
before I had seen it. Door and window 
were close shut, but I opened the little gate 
and went in, leading my horse. Water we 
needed worst of all, and when I glimpsed 
the curb of a well and its long sweep be- 
hind the hut, I dropped the bridle and ran. 
I swung up the sweep and drew the dripping 
bucket up and drank and drank, the horse 
whinnying at my side, and then I held it 
fast as she thrust her gray nozzle in and 
drank, while I rubbed her head with my 
cool wet hand. 

“There,” I cried, pulling her away, 
“ enough ! ” As I turned I noticed the 
yellow thickness had changed to gray, dark 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


245 


well-nigh as night. Chickens were running 
with rumpled feathers and quick sidelong 
glances to roost; the horse kept close to 
my side. It was evident that a summer 
storm, severe beyond the wont of such, was 
close upon us, and that it would be foolish 
to push on. 

There was a little shelter of saplings and 
boughs with a low door big enough for a 
cow, and a smaller one, sod-thatched, for 
fowls; but there was no place of refuge 
for the horse, and I did not like to leave 
her, hot and lathered as she was, to the 
storm. 

“ I must tie you here,” I said aloud, as I 
led her under a rough shelter at the back 
of the hut and fastened her to the post. 

For me the door yielded readily; there 
was a latch-string inside which by manoeu- 
vring I got hold of, and so within. It 
must have been the hut of some free negro 
who knew how to live comfortably, but who 
had gone off in sudden fear, warned maybe 
by some story from a frightened militia-man 
riding homeward. 

A little table near the window was set 


246 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

with wooden plate and mug, a skillet on 
the hearth held a brown corn-pone un- 
broken, and hanging from a string before 
the hearth was a bird done to a turn. 

I sprang toward it quick as a hound 
would, but before I had devoured it the 
room was dark as night and the lightning 
was snapping outside and licking along the 
skillet on the hearth. Then the crash of 
the wind was all about us ; a tree across 
the road was whipped to pieces, the rails 
of the worm-fence were whirled through 
the air, the chimney-sticks and mud were 
clattering against the sides of the hut and 
down the gaping hole of the hearth, and in 
the pauses of the wind I could hear the 
horse whinnying in terror and straining at 
the bridle. 

I could not lose her. Between the gusts 
I rushed outside, caught her and dragged 
her in, and soothed her terror as best I 
could, though whether we were safer here 
it would be hard to say. And then the rain 
came whipping like shot against the cabin’s 
sides. It was dark now as night, except 
when the lurid glare of the lightning flamed 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 247 

so vividly one could not see. We could 
hear the shrieking wind tearing everything 
before it ; the roll of the thunder was like 
the cannonade of yesterday, and the tor- 
rents of rain were washing about the hut 
outside and running down the hole where 
the chimney should have been in ashy 
streams to our feet. 

It looked as if I had escaped the battle- 
field but to meet death in this obscure 
corner. The horse lunging with terror at 
the lightning’s flash, the danger of the thun- 
derbolt, the tearing of the wind, — twice 
I felt the hut tremble and thought we were 
gone, but it settled down to its foundations 
close upon the earth and that danger passed 
us by. The lightning, too, passed over us, 
but the rain came down in torrents. When 
I dared, at last, to open the door, the place 
about was all awash. Water ran over the 
hard, bare earth of the back-yard like a river, 
a yellow stream raced under the shelter, the 
timbers of the frail outhouses strewed the 
ground, and across the rain-covered fields 
I could see the forest’s edge and many a 
prostrate tree. 


248 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


It was late, too ; we were housed for the 
night. The rain ceased at dusk. I led the 
horse out and tied her under the shelter, 
and curled myself on the shuck bed, quilt- 
covered, the only dry spot in the cabin. 

So heavy was the road next day, so 
washed into ravines, so obstructed with 
trees across the way, that it was late after- 
noon before I turned into the narrow lane 
that led to the wood-circled house where 
Tom and Mrs. Rousby’s household had 
taken refuge. 

Here the storm had not been so severe. 
An up-rooted tree upon the lawn, a fallen 
chimney-top, marked its way ; the heart of 
the storm had gone river ward. 

I searched the place eagerly for sight of 
any one as I rode up, but it was deserted. 
I rode by the yard fence to the stable, 
and there, standing in the barnyard, was 
Marshall. He never moved a step to 
meet me, but stood still, looking cool and 
calm and scrupulously neat in his well- 
worn clothes, while I was stained and 
grimed and hungry; still, I was as calm 
as he. 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 249 

I rode in at the open barnyard gate and 
to his side, and we looked at each other in 
steady silence for the space of a second, a 
furrow deepening on his forehead and a 
look of steel growing in his blue eyes. 

“ Tom,” said I, with perfect steadiness, 
“ I have come for you.” 

Now the anger in his face was dying to 
amazement. 

“ We are goingto Baltimore.” I laid my 
free hand on his sleeve. “ The next blow 
will be struck there ! ” 

“ Where learned you such soldiery ? ” 
began Tom scornfully. 

“ At Bladensburg,” I answered steadily. 
“ You knew I had gone, Tom,” I went on 
quickly, for I knew this my one chance for 
quiet speech with him. “ You knew I was 
restive. When I reached Mr. Preston’s, 
Monkton was there. I went with him. I 
have been with them ever since, till — till 
our defeat. I was in the thick of it,” I 
went on, “ before I knew it, but I’d go 
again this day. I am going to Baltimore.” 

“ Not if I forbid it,” he said sternly. 

“ You are going with me.” In the abso- 


250 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


lute stillness I was aware of the hot sun 
and the reek of the stable-yard. 

“ Tom, you must,” I pleaded, “ we need 
you ! ” How quickly I had identified myself 
with the defenders. 

“ But the women,” said Tom, speaking 
slowly. 

“ Are safe.” I waved an impatient hand 
about me ; no enemy was like to find his way 
to this plantation, remote, wood-girdled. 

Still Tom kept his anxious look, and I 
saw his quick glance at the negro working 
far back in the stable. 

“ Leave them to the overseer ; he is ca- 
pable,” I insisted. 

He drew a long breath. “ I must see ! ” 
And for the time being I must rest content. 

“ You need rest,” he said, turning to me 
quickly. “ J oe,” to the negro in the stable, 
“ take this horse ! ” We turned away to 
escape the darkey’s fuss at sight of me. 
“ Come to the house.” 

“ Where are the ladies ? ” 

“ At their siesta.” 

“ Can I get in without their seeing me ? ” 
I asked anxiously. I knew enough of the 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 251 

sisters’ teasing to wish not to meet them in 
this state. 

“ Wait ! ” 

Presently he called me. The hall was 
cool and deserted. He opened a door on 
the right. “Come in here.” 

The scented dusk of the chamber was 
delicious. “ I will find you a snack,” said 
Marshall, as he went out, closing the door 
softly behind him. I tiptoed about, for the 
house was so still I feared to make the 
slightest noise. 

Marshall came with the food he had been 
able to find quickly, and we whispered and 
jested as I ate it greedily, as we were wont 
to do at home. I told him of my adventures 
and I noticed how grave he grew. I began 
to see then that it was as high a bravery to 
be still and keep to the thing one felt his 
duty as to be ever in the thick and press, 
for he said quite gently, “ Ah, J ack, I 
envy you ! ” And then again, “ It is hard, 
sometimes, to do what seems the best to 
do.” So that I felt when I tumbled into 
bed as he bade me there was no jar be- 
tween us. 


252 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

“ His duty.” I felt I knew it fully and 
should so persuade him. 

Meanwhile the scent of lavendered sheets 
stole on my senses ; the perfume of roses, 
yielding their sweetness to the sun, stole 
through the shuttered blinds ; the white 
curtains wavered in the faint breeze that 
reached them ; the wind in the chimney 
mouth was just loud enough to wake the 
echoes and strong enough to set the aspara- 
gus boughs heaped in the hearth a-waving. 
I was asleep. 


CHAPTER XX. 


W HEN I woke it was dark in the room. 

I thought it the beginning of night- 
fall and was about to spring from my bed 
when I heard a soft breathing by my side. 
Some one I guessed to be Marshall was 
there. I stole softly to the window and 
opened it ; it was dawn. The cows were 
lowing in the milking lot and the milkers 
with noggins on their heads were hastening 
to them. The grass was wet with the thick 
dew of August, and the roses beneath my 
window hung, their clusters heavy with 
dampness. 

A sound from the bed startled me, and 
when I turned there was Marshall laughing 
at me. 

“ Faith, you made a night of it. ,, 

“ Why did n’t you wake me ? ” 

“ You slept like a log ; it would have been 
cruelty.” 


254 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


I stretched myself lazily, a most delicious 
sense of well-being running though my veins. 

“ Where are my clothes ? ” 

“ Put your head out the window there 
and call Joe ; he is somewhere about.” 

“ Yas, sir ! yas, sir ! ” said Joe, as he came 
in answer to the call ; “ hyar dey is, an dey 
suttenly is fine ! ” 

Tom had bade him put my clothes in 
order, and he had brushed them to the high- 
est state of cleanliness and polished every 
button to shining brightness. When I got 
into them and surveyed myself in the swing- 
ing mirror above the mahogany drawers 
I felt a thrill of satisfaction. I was tall 
beyond my years and slender ; still, so was 
Monkton, and the clothes fitted to perfec- 
tion. My face, tanned and healthily flushed, 
had a look on it new even to myself, that I 
know now to have come from the decision 
gained by looking great issues squarely in 
the face and choosing firmly one's way; 
and the thatch of hair I strove to brush into 
order on my head was as thick as Tom's 
and as dark as Eob’s. For the first time I 
had no fear of meeting the sisters. 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


255 


So sure was I of myself and of Marshall, 
and so blithe my mood, I had not even a 
word of argument as we dressed, and when 
Tom told me his plans, I was not a whit 
surprised. “I hear that Alvey” — I re- 
membered the ruins of his house — “ has 
taken refuge with his family a few miles 
hence. His boys are stout, good lads, and 
could I get one of them to stay with the 
overseer — ” 

“ The very idea ! ” 

“ I ’m going at once.” 

“ Shall I go with you ? ” 

“ Zounds ! have you not had enough hard 
riding ? ” 

“ But to stay here — ” 

“ And entertain the ladies — ” 

“ Pshaw ! ” 

“ You look the ladies’ man to perfection.” 
At which I turned hot and had not a 
word to answer. 

“ Say not a word of my errand,” cautioned 
Tom, as we went out into the hall. 

I need have felt no shyness, the sisters 
were the perfection of kindness. Tom 
away, they must hear and question of every 


256 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


day of my absence, and I must be bidden 
to Mrs. Rousby’s bedside to tell again as 
much of it as I would. 

Mistress Bess was by my side as we came 
out of her mother’s room. 

“ I have not seen mother so interested 
since we came here,” she said thoughtfully. 
“ I think sometimes,” she added slowly, as 
we loitered in the hall, “ that if she were 
really roused, her illness has passed away.” 
She went on more hastily. “ Her removal 
here has been really a benefit. She eats 
enough, sleeps well ; I have urged her to 
get up, rouse herself, but Jane thinks differ- 
ently, and is for pampering her.” 

“ If Mr. Rousby were here — ” I ventured. 

“It would be different, but she insists 
that we send the most cheerful messages the 
few chances we have had of sending, and 
so — ” she leaned back against the railing 
of the stair near which we stood, and looked 
wistfully through the open door into the 
yard. Somehow I could not help but 
think there was another anxiety wearing 
on her, or her face would not have been 
so thoughtfully sad, for it was a bright 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 257 

face, though shy, and made for sunshine 
and laughter. 

I remembered her early difference with 
Marshall and wondered if that were still, 
somehow, at the root of her discomfort; 
and as I thought, she gave me an opening I 
could not turn from. 

“ You will stay with us now,” she said 
with the air of compelling her thoughts to 
light themes. 

“ No,” said I, watching her keenly, “ I 
go to Baltimore ! ” 

“ When?” 

“ To-morrow.” 

“ And Tom ? ” I scarce noted the name, 
I do not think she did at all. 

“ Goes with me.” 

I saw her clutch the rail and go white, 
but what she said was “ Thank God ! ” 

Then I turned traitor to him. “ He has 
gone to find some one to stay with you and 
the overseer,” I said. 

“ We have been a millstone about him ! ” 
she answered bitterly. Still I saw no clear- 
ing of her face as I had hoped for, and feel- 
ing the time was short and in this crowded 


258 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


household I might have no such chance 
again, I took my hesitancy by both hands. 

“ Is that all ? ” I said in such a way she 
needs must know my meaning. 

She went from white to red, and I could 
see the darkening of her eyes and the half 
laugh, half tremble of her lip. “I have 
lost the picture he gave me, and I have 
urged him to different actions,” she said 
haughtily. 

“Oh,” I cried, “and if the picture be 
found and Marshall goes to the war ? ” 
She drew a long breath and shook her head, 
but I looked back at her and laughed as I 
went hurriedly out of the porch to the 
stable. When I came back past the house 
I was on horseback. I waved my hand to 
the sisters on the porch. “ I ’m going down 
to the harbor,” I called out. I had been 
possessed all morning by a homesick long- 
ing to see it, our island home and the silvery 
tossings of harbor and bay ; with such a 
purpose as I had at heart, I strove to resist 
it no longer. 

The hurricane that swept the country had 
cleared the atmosphere of the oppressiveness 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


259 


which had made action so difficult for the 
few days before it. The air was like a 
draught of wine, the wind cool, the sky a 
great blue arch, clear from rim to rim. 
There were great pools on the way and torn 
branches, and in the woods I saw many an 
up-rooted tree ; but when I got to the Hall 
all was as we left it, peaceful and beauti- 
fully freshened by the rain. 

I turned my horse into the yard, and then 
went down the meadow slope to the water. 
Our boat lay there, tied where we had left 
her, but half filled with the water which had 
swept over her. I bailed her out and put 
for the island. Of the many happy, careless 
moments I had spent there I count that 
noon among the happiest. I lounged in 
the cabin — once I had gone straight to the 
fulfilling of my purpose and gotten the 
silhouette from its hiding-place where I had 
carelessly put it and forgotten it long ago 
— or on the door-sill, or on the bluff. The 
wild fowls screamed about me ; the waves 
ran white capped and dashed along the 
shore, and I listened to them and the sing- 
ing wind with a joyful heart. I was no 


260 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


longer a purposeless, dreaming lad; there 
were things I had done to stir one’s veins 
in remembering, and things I purposed 
doing that set one’s heart athrill in think- 
ing of. 

I looked far up the river, for I knew at 
any time the sails of the British fleet, their 
victory won, might be seen setting down 
that way ; but it was as peaceful as I had 
seen it on any day, and I was determined, 
being so far, to cross the harbor and see if 
there were any tidings of the neighbors 
there. 

As I neared the old farmhouse, I saw it 
wore the same look of desertion as the Hall. 
I moored the boat, went up to it, to find it 
locked and silent ; I went around the house, 
and to my amazement the kitchen door 
was opened. 

“ Harry ! ” a voice called quickly at the 
sound of my footsteps, and the voice was 
Susie’s. 

I made some mumbled answer, striving 
to mimic her brother’s deep voice. 

“ Come in here, I ’m in the kitchen ! ” as 
I kept on. 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


261 


There on the kitchen floor sat Susie, her 
back towards me ; the light from the open 
door shone on her fair hair and slim bent 
figure. I came up behind her, speaking no 
word. 

“ We need some onions ; mother told me 
to get those already dried, and peppers.” 
Her lap was filled with strings of silver 
and red. “ I hate to unfasten the onions.” 
She was sniffing daintily. “ My hands will 
smell odiously. Here ! ” She tossed them 
up to me, and as she glimpsed me she 
sprang screaming to her feet. 

“ Hush ! hush ! ” I begged, for her shriek- 
ing rang eerily through that empty house. 
“ Susie, you know me?” And, at the 
first gleam of recognition she gave me, 
what should that young woman do but 
close her red lips firmly, and walk away 
to the chimney seat as if I were her arch- 
enemy, and she must put that distance be- 
tween us. I stood for a moment there on 
the kitchen floor bewildered, onions and 
peppers strewn at my feet, then I strode 
across to her and sat myself by her side. 

“ Did I frighten you ? ” 


262 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


She gave me a scornful glance from flash- 
ing eyes, but her lips were tremulous for 
all her high looks. 

“ I came across. I wanted to know. I 
have but gotten back/’ I floundered on, 
scarce knowing what thread of speech to 
catch at and so spin my yarn. 

“ Gotten back ! ” 

There was my clue. I seized it boldly, 
and spoke as I had never before in all our 
pranks in that same chimney nook; and 
I watched the scorn die from her face and 
change to wonder, and then to something 
else I gave no name to, even while I heeded. 
Then at the end of all I added, “ And we 
go to-morrow/’ 

“ To-morrow ! ” and we were both silent. 
Suddenly at her silence and the look on her 
face, something sprang up within me I had 
scarce dared to dream of. 

“I am coming back,” I said, so low no 
ear could have heard save that so close to 
me. “ I am coming back some day for 
you!' 


CHAPTER XXI. 


W HAT more I might have said, I 
know not; at that very instant 
Henry came rushing in the hall. Far up 
beyond Point Patience sailed the fleet, 
making outwards. 

I had but time to ask, “ Where have you 
taken refuge ? ” and Susie to answer, “ In the 
tobacco house, far over near the pine woods,” 
and to say a quick good-bye, and to look 
long at Susie's red cheek and curling lashes 
veiling her eyes; if only Henry had not 
been there by that screen of lilacs about the 
kitchen door ! And then I must be skim- 
ming across the harbor. 

The wind sang as I flung the sail to it, 
and we went skimming away, the boat 
heeled to the side, and the water racing 
by her prow. I drew in long breaths of 
the fresh salt air, for I was not a whit 
afraid, the enemy were too far away ; and, 


264 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


even were they not, the “Hawk” was too 
insignificant a prey. 

I turned a loving look on the wide curves 
of our bay, and then again to the tawny 
stretches of our island as we flew past ; but 
once ashore, there was no time for back- 
ward glances. I raced homeward. Tom 
was there. He had stabled his horse, and 
was coming out of the barn gate when I 
rode up. 

“ Did you find Mr. Alvey ? ” I queried 
hastily. 

“No.” 

I sat still on my steed for an instant, dis- 
may at my heart, then I flung myself from 
the horse and, giving him a sharp cut, 
turned him into the stable-yard, where a 
black waited. I hurried after Tom, who 
had turned house-wards. 

“ Where was he ? ” I asked as soon as I 
overtook him. 

“ Gone to Baltimore.” 

“ To enlist ? ” 

“ Yes ! ” 

“His sons?” 

“ Have gone likewise.” 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 265 

We were at the lawn gate and I put out 
my hand as though to open it, but held it 
obstinately shut as I said to him, “ Tom, 
you will not stay here, for this.” 

“ I have stood as much questioning from 
you as I purpose to stand,” he answered 
hotly, though he spoke lowly; the porch 
was not far away and Mistress Bess in her 
dainty afternoon dress was there, watching 
us anxiously. 

“ Better stand it from me than hear hard 
words from others.” 

“ Who would dare ? ” 

“ Many and many a one. This is a free 
country ! ” said I, with a tinge of irony in 
my voice as I recalled the time Tom him- 
self had said the words. 

“ Stand out of my way ! ” 

“ I will not ! ” If anger could have 
withered, the blaze of it in his eyes would 
have scorched me then. 

“ Mistress Bess — ” I began, determined 
to use even the argument of wishes. 

“ ’Fore God ! if you say another word 
I ’ll find time and place both to deal with 
your impudence.” 


266 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


“ Tom,” said I steadily, “ this is not 
1 time and place ’ for anger. Think ! if you 
are undecided still, if you linger now, what 
will your own conscience say to you here- 
after ?” 

A half-stifled exclamation was my only 
answer, but the heat of his anger was 
over. 

“ We must go, both of us, on the mor- 
row/ ’ I went on firmly, as I opened the gate 
and he hurried past me. 

That night I could not sleep. I had 
found Mistress Bess had given up her 
chamber for my luxurious rest the night 
before, and we would have no such sacrifice 
again. Tom slept, as he had been doing, 
on a sofa in the hall ; I, on a pallet by his 
side. I was intolerably restless. Either I 
had slept too much the night before or lived 
too much that day. 

I took my quilt and pillow to the porch 
side, but there the teeming farm life was 
too close. The fowls were restless on their 
roost in a tree near by, and a horse grazing 
not far away made a noise loud as machinery. 
So I tossed from side to side, looked up at 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 267 

the stars shining luminously clear, and by 
and by was aware of a red light showing 
low above the forest. I lay and watched it 
many minutes with but a thought of idle 
curiosity. Then a strange fear shook me. 
I went back in an eager mental flash along 
the windings of the road Hall-ward, and 
then I rose and went softly into the hall 
and bent over Tom, whispering his name ; 
but he slept soundly. I had to shake him 
well before I could rouse him, and then he 
got stumbling to his feet and went bolt into 
the banister, and I feared the whole house- 
hold would be awakened. I got one arm 
about him and steered him to the porch. 

“ Tom,” I whispered, “ look there ! ” 

He made a sleepy exclamation. 

“ What is that red light over there ? ” 

He rubbed his eyes once more, still sleep- 
ily, but was suddenly so wide awake I could 
feel the twitching and tension of his muscles 
where I held his arm. 

“ Do you think it can be — ” 

“ There is no dwelling that way save the 
Hall. You saw the British — ” 

“ Rounding Point Patience.” 


268 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

“ Then they had time ! They found the 
house deserted ! ” 

“ And have rifled the place ! ” 

“Tom,” I whispered, agonized at the 
thought, “ our hut.” 

“ Tut, they ’d never notice it ! ” and I was 
thankful for our humbleness. 

Tom slipped into the hall and came back 
with the few pieces of clothes he had taken 
off, his coat and vest and shoes and stock. 
His shoes he put on hastily, sitting on the 
porch’s edge, and with the others on his arm 
he started off. 

“ Where are you going ? ” I questioned, 
following him. 

“ To find out ! ” 

I stole back hurriedly and made ready to 
accompany him ; but it was a fruitless 
errand. A mile away we met an humble 
neighbor hurrying with the news. The Brit- 
ish had landed that afternoon, plundered the 
Hall, and set it afire at leaving. 

When we got back to the house it was 
near dawn. We freshened our toilette and 
waited with dread the moment when the 
news should be told ; but when it was 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 269 

known every feeling was lost in amazement 
at Mrs. Rousby. 

We were on the porch holding sorrowful 
council, when we heard a light step along 
the hall, and there in the doorway she stood, 
pale, swaying; Mistress Bess at her side, 
scared and triumphant both. She waved 
aside with her thin hand every expression 
of both fear or condolence. 

“ I have come to tell you,” she said, as 
she sank into the flag chair I pulled hastily 
forward, “ I have come to tell you — I have 
heard from my daughters that you wish to 
go to the defence of Baltimore and have 
been detained by fears of our safety. Go ! 
Go this very day ! What you can do must 
be done; give us not a thought.” 

I had been scared miserably, standing 
there behind her chair, thinking she would 
beg that we should not leave her ; and not 
knowing Tom’s humor, I knew not what 
effect such words would have on him. 

“ When such outrage is done, every man 
who will not do his utmost for their defeat 
is a coward. My husband is in Baltimore. 
I would not have him here, I would have 


270 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

no messages to disquiet him. Tell him 
you left me well. There is the breakfast 
hell ! ” as its loud ringing broke in on her 
speech. “I shall go in with you.” 

Truth, it came at the right time ; we were 
all somewhat strained at such heroics. 

She got to her feet, I on one side and 
Mistress Bess on the other, but though she 
laid a hand on the arm of each she took no 
help from either ; nor, must I add, did she 
either suffer any inconvenience or go back 
to her invalidism. The flame of her anger 
had cured her. 

As we fussed about her chair at the 
dining table the lace fichu folded about 
Mistress Bess' neck fell apart when she 
leaned above her mother, and thrust in 
its folds was the silhouette I had restored 
her. 

That day we took to the road. That 
night we slept at Stag Inn, where I affixed 
a proclamation to the door-post which was 
the means of restoring the gray mare to 
her owner, and the next day we were in 
Baltimore. 

We found the country we rode through 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


271 


afire. The very shame of our defeat had 
roused men beyond the power of anything 
else. I do not think another day like that 
at Bladensburg could have been possible, 
had we only half the force we had then ; 
there was the desperate feeling, amongst 
all, of men driven to the wall and nerved 
to any daring. 

So the post road was crowded with 
wayfarers, militia-men, stray members of 
regiments, soldiers from Virginia coming 
by way of our ruined capital, Winder’s 
soldiers, market men with loaded wagons, 
and, coming out, some few women and 
children. 

We had thought to find the city over- 
flowing. The streets we rode through were 
quiet to strangeness. We turned the corner 
toward the tavern. The sign of the Golden 
Horse swung idly before an empty porch 
and gaping vacant doors and windows. Up 
the length of the street there was not a blue 
wagon in sight, the stream from the pump- 
trough trickled into the gutter, the maples 
rustled overhead; it was more than a 
Sabbath stillness. 


272 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

“ Hallo ! ” called I, and we heard in 
answer hasty footsteps echoing through the 
empty house. 

The landlord, recognizing us, came hastily 
down the steps. “Mr. Marshall, Master 
Jack, we looked for you yesterday.” He 
hesitated a moment. “ Could you take your 
horses to the stable ? ” and hurried before 
us as we pulled the beasts about and made 
for the gate he opened. 

“ There was never such a sight seen at 
the Golden Horse ! ” he said as we rode into 
the great yard where hoof nor hide waited 
sale. “No drover will venture on the road 
and every horse we own is pressed into 
service.” 

“ Which way are the people to be found ? ” 
asked Tom, as we hurriedly looked to our 
steeds. 

“ On Hempstead Hill, mostly.” 

“ You have room for us ? ” 

“ Captain Ruxton has seen to it.” 

“ Is he here ? ” I asked quickly. 

“ Aye, the old room. Will you go to 
it ? ” he asked, as we hurried back and 
into the house. 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


273 


The landlord hastened up the broad shal- 
low stair and threw open the door of our 
old room. “ I have to do all myself. Not 
a soul but the women on the place and they 
are all day a-cooking. Lord, it seems as if 
I would buy out the market.” 

“ You can give us a room to ourselves ? ” 
asked Tom quickly, seeing the two great 
beds. 

“ To yourselves ? Zounds, sir, men are 
sleeping all over the place, hall, office, any- 
where. The town is crowded ; a bed is not 
to be had for love or money.” 

“ But favor ! ” I put in mischievously. 

“ You have said it, and Captain Ruxton 
has ever our best.” 

Tom must be content with his company, 
and it did me good to see the two come 
closer together in the days which followed. 
It did them good, too. Bob was a check on 
Marshall’s haughtiness and he in turn on 
Rob’s carelessness. 

But now we must look for Mr. Rousby. 
All down Market Street the shops were 
closed or idly open, a listless apprentice on 
guard. Gadsby’s was as deserted as the 
18 


274 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


Golden Horse. It was too near the noon 
for shadows. The sun beat mercilessly on 
us as we hurried on. At the bridge which 
spanned the Falls I paused a moment to 
bare my head to the faint wind blowing up 
the harbor and to wipe the sweat from my 
face. The shipping was huddled close, like 
chickens when a hawk is near, schooners, 
vessels, big and small ; and among them 
was a craft such as I had never seen — 
big, white, a huge wheel on the side and 
a black chimney of iron towering from 
the middle. 

“ What is it ? ” I asked curiously. 

“ That ? ” Tom cast one look at it. “ Oh, 
that must be the new boat I ’ve read of. 
They use steam for propelling it, and claim 
it is both safer and faster than wind and 
tide. I heard they had bought one for the 
packet line to Frenchtown.” 

I, too, had heard of it, and resolved the 
first moment’s leisure should bring me 
closer to it, but that moment was farther 
off than I thought. It was a good three 
miles to Hempstead Hill, but when we found 
it, we found where the life of the city had 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


275 


poured itself. On the unfinished breast- 
work the men swarmed, those who dug, 
and those who shovelled the dirt into the 
carts, and those who drove, and those who 
directed ; but nowhere did we see Mr. 
Rousby. 

“ Suppose you go that way,” I suggested, 
“and I this; we’ll meet here.” We 
were in everybody’s way ; people were run- 
ning into us and jostling us. Tom gladly 
assented. 

We were on the top of a levelled earth- 
work as he spoke, and slipping and sliding 
in the loose dirt I hastened off. A careless 
step sent me tumbling, and I pulled myself 
up, to run full tilt into some one coming 
my way. 

“ Can you tell me,” I began instantly, 
“ where Mr. Rousby is ? ” 

“ Maybe I could.” 

It was Mr. Rousby himself, laughing 
heartily at my discomfiture. 

“Well, my own wife would not have 
known me. How is she ? ” he added 
anxiously. 

“ Better, much better ! " 


276 JACK AND IIIS ISLAND. 

“ Then she ’ll be able to come. I sent for 
her yesterday.” 

“ Sent for her ! ” 

“ I sent a man to bid them drive by easy 
stages hither.” 

“We must have passed him. There 
were many wayfarers,” I stammered. 

“ Where ’s Marshall ? ” he demanded 
quickly. 

“ Here, looking for you. He went that 
way ; I — ” 

“ Ran into me quickly enough. What is 
he going to do ? ” 

“ Volunteer in one of the regiments.” 

“ I ’ll see to it.” 

“Mr. Rousby,” I begged earnestly, “you 
will see he has the most active service. 
He wished it; he might not say so.” 

“Hm! there’ll be active service enough. 
What are you — what in the deuce ! ” He fell 
back and eyed me from head to foot. “ I 
thought there was something ! Where did 
you get that dress, sir ? ” tapping me on my 
epaulettes. 

“ I fought for it.” 

“ So ! ” incredulously, whereupon I told 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 277 

him in few words where I had gotten it and 
where I had worn it. “I shall join the 
Flotilla men here,” I added. 

“ They are there to the left.” He pointed 
towards the harbor. 

“ There is Tom ! ” 

“ You left all safe at the Hall ? ” he asked 
as we hastened after Marshall. “ What ! ” 
for I was stammering, and scarcely knew 
what to say. I had hoped Tom would have 
the telling. “ You left all safe?” he 
insisted. 

“ The British — ” 

“ What of it ? Man, speak out ! ” 

“The Hall is burned,” I said swiftly. 
He stopped in his tracks, and his ruddy face 
went white under the grime and powder of 
clay. 

“ My grandfather built it,” he said slowly 
at last. “We have dwelt there for three 
generations. He had the grant from the 
Proprietor. Marshall ” — they greeted each 
other heartily — “Jack has been telling me 
my house is gone. Ah, well, we ’ll make 
’em pay for it, sir, we ’ll make ’em pay for 
it. And you want to volunteer! I ’ll man- 


278 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


age it for you. We’re glad of every one, 
every one. Come and see what we are 
doing first.” 

We were on the top of one of the highest 
earthworks which was already finished, so 
that we could both see and be out of the 
way of the swarming workers. 

“ Here is where we look for the storm. 
The enemy will land somewhere along the 
river, and when they march on, sir, they ’ll 
meet this ! ” 

“ This ” we could see even in its unfin- 
ished state would be a line of fortifications 
a mile long, with semi-circular batteries here 
and there for cannon. Behind these, on 
higher natural sites, several other batteries 
were being constructed which would com- 
mand the lower line. 

“ The battery at the Lazaretto commands 
that end ; some of Barney’s men are there,” 
he said, turning to me. “ From there across 
the neck of the harbor to the fort is a line 
of sunken ships ; impregnable, sir, absolutely 
impregnable ! And should they steal around 
the fort on the river side and strive to 
make a landing they will meet with a warm 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 279 

welcome. We have two batteries there, 
Fort Covington and the City Battery. 
There are fortifications to the north and 
west likewise, but here is where the blow 
will fall. We are safe, sir, safe as a church. 
I have sent for my wife and daughters.” 

Tom looked astonished. 

“ My wife, I take it, is well enough by 
now to stand the journey.” 

Mr. Rousby went on with minute details 
of the defence, how two regiments from 
Pennsylvania had come and were camped 
on the field near by — he pointed to their 
white tents — and more were on the way, 
but I scarce heeded him. My eyes were 
fixed on the water between the Lazaretto 
Point and the fort. There would be the 
danger and there were Barney’s men. 

“ I think,” said I, “ I will go look up the 
Flotilla men.” 

“ I will see to Marshall’s enlistment.” 

“ I will be at the inn by nightfall ! ” I 
added hurriedly, and was off. One adven- 
ture I had going. Turning quickly to a 
loud hallooing from the left I saw Rob. 
He was driving a cart of earth, full tilt, 


280 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


from the excavation to the embankment, 
and he was standing grandly, handling the 
rope reins with a lordly air. 

I put my hands before my mouth in 
semblance of a horn and called, “ Ta — 
loora — lo ! ta — loora — lo ! ” At which 
he nearly fell over from laughter. 


CHAPTER XXII. 


T HE busy excited days ran together in 
a blur of work and jest and sleep, and 
always work. The Flotilla men wrought 
with the others on the breastworks. By 
dawn we were gone, a day’s provision in our 
pockets, which meant a cold snack to be 
eaten somewhere in the shelter of the forti- 
fications. Now and then, as we came back 
to inn or home, we would see the women 
of the city loitering along the way, should 
the streets be those of fashion; and once, 
passing by Gadsby’s I saw a group at the 
porch’s corner, looking curiously down at 
the crowd. It was Mrs. Rousby and her 
daughters, but I was too grimed and hun- 
gered to join them, and, supper done, I was 
fit for naught but bed, and so the next day, 
and the next. 

It was on a Sunday we had our first 
breathing spell. The Sabbath before had 


282 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

been like any other day, but this day we 
rested. Our defences were complete. 

I waked with a most luxurious feeling 
of holiday in the air. I watched the light 
filtering through the blinds, and heard the 
rustling of the maples outside, and yawned 
contentedly. When I raised my head cau- 
tiously, for fear of waking Tom, there was 
Rob wide awake likewise. 

We slipped from bed, and with much 
whispering and tiptoeing made our toilettes. 
We had planned the night before, the three 
of us, that Tom should be left to late slum- 
bers and to his own devices, while Rob and 
I should follow our own sweet will. 

I had seen to it that my garments were 
duly furbished up, and when I saw Rob un- 
locking a drawer in the mahogany chest, 
and taking therefrom a suit more gorgeous 
than the one I recalled, I punched him to 
show my delight. So arrayed, we swaggered 
down to breakfast, and to chaffering with 
the crowds on the porch or street, and then 
we loitered off. 

“ Shall we go to meeting ? ” I asked. 

“ I had thought — ” 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 283 

“ Think how delightful the quiet of it will 
be,” I said teasingly. 

“ Oh, well, come on.” 

There were only a few in their places as 
we came in, and few more entered; many 
had gone to the country, up beyond the 
town, where there was a large society. 
But when we had taken our seats, and the 
stillness had settled over us, and I began to 
steal glances toward the women's side, I saw 
the face I looked for. Rob saw it too, spite 
of the stiffness of his attitude; and when 
the meeting was done and we went out to 
the steps and the bit of green before the 
door, he waited eagerly to see if she would 
greet him. 

Mr. Hopkins came, up to me with some 
question of Marshall and our affairs, and 
as we stood there, the sun shining white on 
the street, the trees motionless with midday 
heat, the Friends about us talking cheerily, 
there came suddenly on the Sabbath's still- 
ness the boom of cannon, “ boom ! boom ! ” 
tearing the peaceful quiet asunder. 

I sprang for Rob, standing near the 
women's door. It was the signal, the fir- 


284 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


ing of the cannon on the court-house green, 
the signal that the British had entered the 
Patapsco. 

“ Rob ! ” I cried, but he never heeded me. 

“ You will say good-bye ? ” he was begging 
the slender figure standing on the steps. 
“ You will say good-bye ? I must go, Ruth.” 

She gave him her hand. I could see it 
tremble as she gave it. 

“We part friends?” 

“ God bless thee,” she whispered. 

And then and there Rob caught her close 
and kissed her, and' then we went racing 
up the street. As we ran the crowd grew ; 
the people were pouring from the houses. 
Every man was a soldier and every man 
was making ready. At the inn we found 
Marshall; he was well-nigh ready. I re- 
member now how we chafed Rob for not 
having time to change his finery. We hur- 
ried out. Down Market Street our way 
lay together. The women hung from their 
windows to see us pass, surging on without 
order yet, each man to his post. At Gadsby’s 
I looked up and saw Mistress Bess, white 
as her frock, but smiling as she glimpsed us. 























* 






















JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 285 

When our ways parted, we paused for a 
moment, the crowd pressing by us, and 
looked in each others faces. None of us 
spoke, only a long look and they went their 
way, I mine. 

That night we lay in our barges, passive ; 
next day we heard the guns of the battle of 
North Point, and prayed and swore alike 
for the moment of our own fight. But the 
day went to its close. The silvery splendors 
of the night shone down on harbor and 
fort and fortifications, and we waited each 
hour for attack ; it should have been the 
enemy’s manoeuvre to have opened fire 
upon Point Lazaretto, seize it, and open the 
way for the attack of their land forces on 
the fortifications, but there was not a gleam 
to brighten the night save the shine of 
heaven’s lights. 

Beyond midnight I was hurrying across 
the harbor in an open rowboat with a mes- 
sage, — that was my service, I had dis- 
claimed all rank, knowing my ignorance, 
and had been detailed as aide, — my eyes 
searching far down in the darkness where 
we knew lay our foe, when I heard a soli- 


286 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

tary report and saw the bursting of a 
rocket. I made all speed. The bombard- 
ment had begun ! But it was not until 
sunrise that they got the range of us. 

That day I learned what courage meant. 
It means to lie hour after hour with shells 
bursting overhead, bombs screaming past, 
the barges reeling with the force of the ex- 
plosions, the air heavy with smoke that, like 
a pall, hangs over everything and veils 
disaster or victory, and holds the tale you 
strive to tear from its folds ; to know that 
you are panting for a chance to fight back 
at them ; to know that your guns are loaded, 
aimed; to know the range of your guns 
would carry but halfway to the enemy's 
decks, and then sullen, stubborn, bulldog- 
like, hold on and wait your chance — that 
is what we learned. 

Once the enemy came close enough, and 
the guns from the fort and the Point and 
the barges hailed destruction upon them ; 
how they fled back to safety ! 

Then again the rain of fire and the cloud 
of smoke, which hung more heavily about 
us in the humid atmosphere of the rain 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


287 


which had begun, and was drifting even be- 
twixt us and the fort, so that we began to 
look with straining eyes toward the flag fly- 
ing there, and I watched for its folds be- 
tween the mists. 

Night settled down, the fire was fierce ; 
we feared secret manoeuvres. It was mid- 
night when the lieutenant came to me. 
“ There is some secret movement among the 
enemy ; we have a message from the Point. 
By the glare of a rocket they swear they 
have seen a disembarking party.” 

“ Fort Covington ! ” I cried. Could they 
steal up the river in the darkness of the 
night, and come upon them there and seize 
the guns and turn them against the fort 
and city, we should be in dire straits. “ I 
must warn them.” 

He nodded, and I was off in my boat 
across the inner harbor. 

So far the barges had not been struck. 
We had ceased to fear their fire. Now a 
shell exploding above me made me wonder if 
they had gotten a better range. A bomb 
came skipping along the water, and as I 
turned a second to watch its course there 


288 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


was an awful roar all about me, a flashing 
of lights and singing of water, and I went 
down into the waves. I came up gasping, 
struck out feebly, and went down again. 
Then I knew with a sudden keen conscious- 
ness that it was a fight for life. I struck 
out more strongly and found an oar ; float- 
ing against it, I rested, and tried to collect 
my dazed wits. I was hurt somewhere and 
bruised and stunned ; one arm — it was my 
left, thank heavens! — hung limp and use- 
less. And then I remembered the message 
I bore. I set my teeth, resolved the errand 
should be done. Pushing the oar before, 
and striking out with my right arm, I made 
slow headway, but when I was nigh exhausted 
I felt the firm earth underfoot. My legs at 
least were sound, and I started running for 
the fort. Thank God ! I got there, for the 
men were wet, dispirited, grumbling ; soon 
as they knew a possible danger they were 
alert, hearty, ready. 

We waited with straining ears and eyes 
for I know not how many minutes, the 
thunder of the cannonading making hearing 
impossible ; then there ran up at our very 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 289 

side, it seemed, a rocket. How we thun- 
dered at them ! How the cannon of the fort 
and the City Battery roared ! Their fire 
back was close and hot, if from small guns. 
One of our men fell wounded, another dead. 
He was a gunner ; and seizing his ramrod 
from his stiffened hand, I stood to his work. 
It was near dawn when we knew we had 
driven them off. Then while our men were 
still cheering, I fell, faint with pain and 
exhaustion, crumpled up against the gun, 
and slept as men will in the pauses of ago- 
nizing pain. 

When I awoke there was a loud deafen- 
ing huzzaing and cheering about me. It 
was broad daylight, the mists drifted apart, 
and the flag floated above the fort, and 
there was no ship of the fleet in sight. 


19 


CHAPTER XXIII. 


1 WAS so weak, bruised, sore, and faint 
that I could scarcely have gotten to my 
feet but for that infection of joy that was 
running like a riot from battery to fort, 
from fort to barge, from barge to Point and 
fortifications. Under its stimulus I begged 
that the officer in command should send 
word of me to my commander and give me 
leave to go city-ward. 

He said some kind words of praise that 
fell on dulled ears, as I hurried away, 
stumbling at first, but walking easier as my 
limbs eased from their stiffness. 

Never have I seen such sights as that 
morning in the town, but I hurried past 
them all, a very passion of uneasiness 
possessing me. I was safe and unharmed 
— I counted my wounds as such — but 
where was Rob, and where was Marshall ? 
How had they fared in the battle on land ? 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


291 


I pushed my way straight through the 
throngs about the Golden Horse to the land- 
lord. Was there any news of them ? His 
jolly red face whitened at the question. 

“Mr. Marshall is upstairs — ” I never 
waited the finishing of his sentence, but 
worn as I was, bounded up the steps. The 
door was ajar. I glimpsed the bed, Tom’s 
white face on the pillow, and then I fear I 
did my one cowardly deed of the siege — 
I fainted. 

When next I knew the outside world, my 
head, too, was pillowed. Over there was 
Tom; I could see him. The room was 
beautifully quiet and peaceful and dusky, 
and there was a smell of roses in the air. 
I turned slowly and painfully — what a 
twitch it gave me to move — and close by 
was Mistress Bess, pale, but looking very 
resolute and calm, no trace of shyness in 
her face. I called her name softly and she 
started, her face a very tremble of joy. 

“ Jack ! ” she whispered, bending over 
me, and I could see her gray eyes darkened 
with tears, and the wet drops on her lashes, 
and her tremulous lips. 


292 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

“ How is he ? ” I begged. 

“ Better, much better. He is very anx- 
ious about you.” 

“ Me!” 

She shook her head at me. Then she 
said softly, “He is asleep” 

Then I asked, “ Rob ? ” 

She smiled as she answered what she 
knew I meant. “Not a scratch ! ” 

I lay still and quiet, she still standing by 
me. So I was ill or had been ; I scarce 
thought of it. “ Was he wounded ? ” I 
whispered, pointing a shaking finger toward 
Tom. 

She nodded her dark head. “ But the 
ball has been extracted. He is doing well ; 
but he has been anxious — ” 

“ If he had been killed,” said I slowly, 
“ I should have felt — I should have felt 
I had killed him” 

That had been the thought I could not 
stand, and it had swept the last straw of my 
strength away. 

Poor Bess sank by my bedside to stifle the 
sob that would come. 

“ I, too ” she whispered. 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


293 


Then when she was calmer, “ It was 
Rob who rescued him ; he was in the first 
charge — oh ! I must not tell you now. 
He is much better, and now he will not be 
anxious. We have all been so worried.” 

That must have been about me, but I 
cared not a whit. I turned my head wearily 
on my pillow. The wind was rustling in the 
maples outside and some one on the street 
was whistling merrily. How strange and 
stirring the new strain was. What was 
it ? I lost the tune. I was asleep while I 
wondered. 

Tom and I had a most wonderful con- 
valescence, he from his wound, I from the 
fever into which I had been thrown. We 
were showered with attentions. Our room 
was a bower of roses. We would have been 
stuffed with dainties had we eaten all were 
sent us. Mrs. Rousby and her daughters, 
Mr. Rousby and Rob, were ceaseless in their 
care for us, but Mistress Bess was still chief 
nurse. There were other visitors likewise, 
Mr. Hopkins and men of the city, who had 
many good wishes to put into fine words 
for us. 


294 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

It was when we were both able to hobble 
from bed to chair that Mr. Rousby came 
noisily in late one afternoon. Mrs. Rousby 
and Rob were with us, and Mistress Bess 
was standing by the open window, looking 
idly down into the street. “ There is news 
from the Commodore ! ” he exclaimed before 
he was well across the threshold. 

“ What of him ? ” I demanded instantly. 

Mr. Rousby’ s hands were full of papers, 
and I thought to gain our news from these 
and stretched out an impatient hand. But 
he made no recognition of my movement. 
“ He is better ! ” 

“ Where?” 

Mr. Rousby settled himself comfortably in 
the chair he had dragged close to his wife’s 
side. “ At his farm near Elkridge landing. ” 

“ Who told you ? ” I again demanded. 

“ The Captain. He will visit you shortly. 
He has but reached the city and is wild for 
fear his vessel has been sunken in the har- 
bor’s mouth, and he hastened to the wharf 
where he left her moored. I assured him 
she was safe, so I have heard, but he must 
see for himself.” 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 295 

Then seeing that his audience was reduced 
to a proper state for listening, he went on 
with the news with which he was over- 
flowing. 

“ The British treated the Commodore 
most kindly when he fell into their hands 
on the field of Bladensburg.” 

“ More than they did for many others,” 
declared Rob hotly. 

“We are speaking of Commodore Bar- 
ney,” replied Mr. Rousby with stately dig- 
nity. “They treated him most kindly. Their 
surgeon dressed his wounds. They left him 
at a house where he would be well cared 
for — Monkton and the Captain with him. 
There his wife joined him, and soon as he 
was able, they moved him to his home, 
where he does well. They think him well- 
nigh cured.” 

“ Thank God ! ” I whispered, for the 
Commodore was my hero. 

Though I was joyed then, I trust it may 
cast no gloom upon my story to add that 
not many years after, the wound received 
at Bladensburg caused our loved leader’s 
life, and that the ball, extracted after death, 


296 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


is kept among the mementos of our history. 
But now I heard, thankful for the tale. 

“ Now,” said Mr. Rousby, smiling broadly, 
“ here is ‘ Niles’ Register,’ which has just been 
published. You will find it rare reading. 
Listen to this : — 

“ Day by day we learn the heroic deeds of our 
late defence. It has but now come to our ears 
that in the gallant charge in which the British 
general, Ross, was killed a former citizen of our 
town, who had hurried heroically to our aid in 
our hour of need, distinguished himself by his 
brave conduct. Mr. Marshall — ” 

“ Hush, will you ! ” Tom cried, for we 
had not dreamed the mention was of him, 
spite of Mr. Rousby’s manifest delight. 

“ Mr. Marshal], for it is of him we speak, by 
his heroic action — ” 

“Hush, or I shall hobble out of the 
room.” 

Tom rose to his feet with such a look of 
determination on his white face and started 
off so quickly, though he staggered when he 
had gone a step or two, that Mr. Rousby 
was startled. 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


297 


“ Bless my soul ! ” he cried, as he caught 
him and helped him back to his chair. 
“ Bless my soul ! Then maybe you ’d like 
to hear what they say about Jack here.” 

It was but a line, a mention of my feat 
at Fort Covington ; but it did me good to 
hear the praise, and it won me many a 
friend in the days to come. 

“And here, sir, is your song.” Mr. 
Rousby handed me a printed slip. “ It has 
been hard enough to come by. Faith, Mr. 
Keys has made himself a name ; his song is 
sung everywhere. ’T was writ, sir, first on 
an old envelope while he was imprisoned 
on the British ship, and while they were 
thundering at our fort. Gad ! when the 
dawn broke and he saw our flag still flying 
above it — here, sir, read for yourself ; 
doubtless you know the air they sing it to.” 

He began to hum the tune I had heard 
on street and stair, everywhere, since I had 
thrown off the stupor of my fever ; while I 
read the stirring lines to their end : 

44 The star-spangled banner, oh! long may it wave, 
O’er the land of the free, and the home of the 
brave.” 


298 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


I put my hand before my eyes and sat 
very still when I was done, and Mistress 
Bess stole to my side with a movement of 
sympathy; but when I looked up at her 
and we each of us — as people will do in 
the great moments of life — read each other s 
heart, I knew why the tear-drops trembled 
on her lashes and she knew why my eyes 
were dim. It was of neither our country 
nor our city we were thinking then ; it 
was of Tom. He was reinstated. 


CHAPTER XXIV. 


I T was that very afternoon that Mr. 

Hopkins came to our room. It was 
dusk, but the candles had not yet been 
lighted, and he came hurriedly and left 
Marshall a letter. 

Tom pulled the tassel of the bell-cord 
near his chair when he was gone, and bade 
the servant place the candle-stand near him 
and light the candle there. 

As for me, I was silent and strangely 
heartsick. The joy of the afternoon brought 
this as its rebound. The noise of the street 
outside jarred upon me, and I closed my 
eyes and thought longingly of the island 
and the singing winds and dashing waves. 

“ Jack ! ” Tom’s voice called me back 
from my dream of them. I opened my eyes 
to see the gleam of the candle shining on 
his fair face and a strange emotion show- 
ing there. 


300 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

“ This letter ” — he held the crumpled 
sheets tightly in his hand — “ is of your 
affairs. Will you read it ? ” 

“ Tell me!” I said instead. 

“Your lawyer writes urging you to re- 
turn at once if ever you intend doing so. 
Affairs on the plantation need the owner’s 
attention, either that or sell the place. He 
has a good offer if you care to sell.” 

“ How can I get there ? ” I asked petu- 
lantly. 

“ As for that the whole face of things 
has changed since Baltimore has beaten the 
enemy. The embargo will soon be raised. 
There will be wagons making the journey 
likewise. Men are encouraged to go about 
their affairs.” 

I was quiet, while my heart gave some 
long, heavy beats. To go on with my 
journey to Georgia, to leave Marshall and 
Rob and the friends I had made about our 
island ; and then I saw in a flashing vision 
Susie’s face, downcast, smiling, outlined 
against the screen of lilacs. 

What should I find there? An empty, 
isolated house, slaves who had forgotten 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 301 

me, neighbors whose remembrance I had 
outgrown, relatives distant by both miles 
and blood. 

Here I had first lived my own life. I 
had been enabled to do some deeds which 
had won me praise ; there were new friends 
for the making and old ones tugging at 
my heart-strings when I thought of put- 
ting six hundred miles between us. I 
straightened myself suddenly. “ What do 
you think of doing ? ” I demanded of Tom. 

He moved uneasily and shifted the candle 
on the table before he replied. “ My affairs 
in the West have prospered better than I 
expected. I have some money. I am 
thinking; of buying a plantation.” 

“ Where ? ” 

“ Near Rousby Hall,” he confessed. 

“ Do you think I had best go ? ” I ques- 
tioned, pointing to the letter on the table. 

“ I scarcely know.” 

“ If I should sell, and invest here ” 

Tom looked up eagerly. “ In that case 
Mr. Hopkins, who has some inkling of the 
matter, bade me say he would stand your 
friend.” 


302 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 

I was thinking intently and made no an- 
swer, so Tom went on. “ He is the shrewd- 
est young merchant in the town and will 
point you a sure way towards making your 
fortune. He is scarce half a score years 
older than you.” 

“ Should I go into business here,” I began, 
slowly putting my thoughts into words, 
“ with his kind assistance and with Rob to 
attend to my teaming — ” 

“ Gad ! the very thing ! ” 

“ If I do, you ’ll sell me the island, Tom ? ” 

“ Zounds ! ” 

“ You ’ll sell me the island ? You ’ll have 
your plantation. You ’ll have no need of 
it ; I want it.” 

“ Jack ! ” Marshall hobbled over to me 
and touched my hand. It was cool enough, 
if my cheek were feverish. 

“ You will sell it ? ” I insisted. 

“ You shall have it. Faith, don’t work 
yourself into a fever.” 

So I had my way. The island was duly 
sold and bought. It was mine. The thought 
of it was like tonic in the blood. And then 
I fell to dreaming of its sandy stretches, 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


303 


and to longing to feel the blowing of the 
strong salt wind on my cheek and listen to 
the waves curling along the shore and see 
the silvery gleam of the water and the au- 
tumn mists veiling the mainland — and to 
see likewise the face of a little neighbor there. 
I longed to be back there while I was yet 
weak ; while the lawyer was engaged in sell- 
ing my place and Mr. Hopkins was busied 
in looking out for a warehouse for my 
business. I longed for it more and more. 

There are times when all things seem to 
set the current of one’s whims. The Rousbys 
were anxious to be starting homeward. 
Tom, too, was strong enough for the journey. 
The moving would do me little harm. In 
a few days we were gone. Mr. Rousby and 
his family took the landward way, but Tom 
and I sailed down the bay in the very ves- 
sel whose shipwreck cast us on the island, 
our old Captain at the helm. 

We spent long, happy days there that 
fall, — days that were not all idle either. 
The Hall was rebuilding, the family living 
merrily meanwhile in one of the outbuild- 
ings. Tom was looking after the buying 


304 


JACK AND HIS ISLAND. 


and the stocking of his plantation, and 
strength was coming back to me, like the 
run of the tide on the flood. 

The Wilsons were home again, their 
humble house had escaped. The fear of 
insurrection had passed away with the fear 
of invasion, and spite of its terrors, or rather 
because of them, the country side was never 
gayer. 

Tom’s wedding that late autumn set the 
ball rolling, and when at Christmas-tide I 
left for a new home and for serious work, 
it still rolled merrily. 

But that was not the end of my island 
days. Many a bachelor holiday I spent 
there, and many another likewise. Susie 
was well-nigh as fond of it, when we ran 
from the city for a merry-making, as of 
her old home across the beautiful curving 
harbor. 



V 



I 














Stories of the Revolution 

By JOHN PRESTON TRUE, Author of “ The Iron Star," etc. 


SCOUTING FOR WASHINGTON 

A Story of the Days of Sumter and Tarleton. Illustrated by Clyde 
O. De Land. i2mo, decorated cloth, $1.50. 

A capital book for young readers. On a historical background, commendably accurate in 
its details, is sketched an imaginary tale of absorbing interest. — Brooklyn Times. 

MORGAN’S MEN 

In which are Narrated the Adventures of Stuart Schuyler, Captain of 
Cavalry in the Revolution. A Sequel to “ Scouting for Washington.” 
Illustrated by Lilian Crawford True. i2mo, decorated cloth, $1.20 net 

The Boston Transcript calls it “ one of the best, if not the best, of the juvenile historical 
stories that have been issued this season.” 


ON GUARD! AGAINST TARLETON AND TORY 

Further Adventures of Stuart Schuyler. Illustrated by Lilian Crawford 
True. i2mo, decorated cloth, $1.20 net. 

This is the third and concluding volume in the stirring Stuart Schuyler 
Series, — stories of the American Revolution which have already de- 
lighted thousands of readers. The hero escapes many dangers, and 
renders valuable aid to General Greene in his campaign against Lord 
Cornwallis. The book abounds in stirring situations and battle pictures. 


By the same Author 

THE IRON STAR 

And what it saw on its Journey through the Ages from Myth to History. 
Illustrated by Lilian C. True. i2mo, decorated cloth, $1.50. 

A wonderfully ingenious little story, showing a child how man has developed from the 
days of primitive savagery. It is much easier to remember than any school manual, but 
in less than 150 paees the author spans the gap between the Stone Age and Miles 
Standish . — Boston Transcript. 


LITTLE, BROWN, & COMPANY 

Publishers , 254 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON, MASS. 


New Books for Young 1 People 


NATHALIE’S CHUM. By Anna Chapin Ray. Author of 
“Teddy: Her Book/' etc. Illustrated, i2mo, #1.20 net. 

ON GUARD! AGAINST TARLETON AND TORY. By John 
Preston True, author of “Morgan’s Men,” etc. Illustrated, nmo, 
$1.10 net. 

THE ADVENTURES OF TORQUA. By Charles F. Holder. 
Illustrated, i2mo, $1.20 net. 

BRENDA’S COUSIN AT RADCLIFFE. By Helen Leah 
Reed, author of “ Brenda : Her School and Her Club.” Illustrated, 
l2mo, #1.20 net. 

POLLY’S SECRET. A Story of the Kennebec. By Harriet 
A. Nash. Illustrated by Harry C. Edwards. i2mo, $1.20 net. 

IN THE GREEN FOREST. Written and illustrated by Katha- 
rine Pyle, author of “ As the Goose Flies,” etc. Crown 8vo, $1.50 net. 

JACK AND HIS ISLAND. By Lucy M. Thruston, author of 
“ A Girl of Virginia,” etc. Illustrated, i2mo, $ 1.20 net. 

CATHARINE’S PROXY. A Story of Schoolgirl Life. By 
Myra Sawyer Hamlin, author of “Nan at Camp Chicopee,” etc. 
Illustrated, i2mo, $1.50. 

FOXY THE FAITHFUL. By Lily F. Wesselhoeft, author of 
“ Sparrow the Tramp,” etc. Illustrated, i2mo, #1.20 net. 

GRANDMA’S GIRLS. By Helen Morris. Illustrated, i2mo, 
$1.20 net. 

THE PRINCESS K ALLISTO AND OTHER TALES OF 
THE FAIRIES. By William Dana Orcutt. Illustrated, 4to, 
$ 2.00 net. 

A DORNFIELD SUMMER. By Mary M. Haley. Illustrated, 

1 2 mo, $1.20 net. 


LITTLE, BROWN, & COMPANY 

Publishers, 254 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON, MASS. 


New Books for the Young 


MORGAN’S MEN 

A thrilling Revolutionary story by John Preston True, author of 
“ Scouting for Washington,” “ The Iron Star,” etc. Illustrated, 
i2mo, $ 1.20 net. 

THE CAPTAIN OF THE SCHOOL 

A capital boys’ and girls’ story, by Edith Robinson. Illustrated, 
i 2mo, $ i . 20 net. 

BRENDA’S SUMMER AT ROCKLEY 

By Helen Leah Reed, author of “ Brenda, her School and her 
Club.” Illustrated, 1 2mo, $i. 20 net. 

AS THE GOOSE FLIES 

Written and illustrated by Katharine Pyle, author of “The 
Christmas Angel.” I 2mo, $1.20 net. 

HIGH SCHOOL DAYS IN HARBORTOWN 

By Lily F. Wesselhoeft, author of “ Doris and Her Dog 
Rodney.” Illustrated, i2mo, $1.20 net. 

FOUR ON A FARM 

By Mary P. Wells Smith, author of “ The Jolly Good Times 
Stories,” “The Young Puritan Stories,” etc. Illustrated, 1 2mo, 
$1.20 net. 

HOLLY-BERRY AND MISTLETOE 

A Christmas Romance of 1492. By Mary Caroline Hyde. Il- 
lustrated, i2mo, 80 cents net. 

THE STORY OF A LITTLE POET 

An original child’s story by Sophie Cramp Taylor, Illustrated, 
1 2mo, $1.20 net. 

THE MAGIC KEY 

A fairy story of the modern kind, by Elizabeth S. Tucker. Il- 
lustrated, i2mo, $1.00 net. 


LITTLE, BROWN, fc? COMPANY, Publishers 

254 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON, MASS. 


New Illustrated Editions of 
Miss Alcott’s Famous Stories 


LITTLE MEN : Life at Plumfield with Jo’s Boys 

By Louisa M. Alcott. With fifteen full-page illustrations by Reginald 
B. Birch. Crown 8vo. Decorated cloth. $ 2.00 . 

Nothing of its kind could be better than Miss Alcott’s “ Little Men,” unless, possibly, 
her “ Little Women.” ... It is the story of boys at school, and how they lived there. 
The boys will like it, for it will tell them of their own kind. The mothers will like it, for 
it is full of suggestions on the high art of governing. And everybody should read it, for it 
is cheery and like cordial from beginning to end. — Congregationalist. 

“ Little Men ” has never been given to an admiring public in any form so charming as 
this one. All that was needed to make the tale quite irresistible was such illustrations as 
are here supplied, fifteen full-page ones instinct with life and movement and charm. — 
Boston Budget. 

LITTLE WOMEN : or Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy 

By Louisa M. Alcott. With 15 full-page illustrations by Alice Barber 
Stephens. Crown 8vo. Decorated cloth. $2.00. 

No book for the young is better known than Miss Alcott’s famous 
“ Little Women.” It continues to have a wider reading and circulation 
than any other book of its class. Thousands of new readers will be 
delighted with this favorite book, in its new form, with Mrs. Stephens’s 
charming pictures. 

AN OLD-FASHIONED GIRL 

By Louisa M. Alcott. With 12 full-page pictures by Jessie Willcox 
Smith. Crown 8vo. Decorated cloth. $2.00. 

The third volume of “ The Little Women Series.” Miss Alcott in this 
book described “ the good old fashions which make women truly beauti- 
ful and honored, and render home what it should be, — a happy place 
where parents and children, brothers and sisters, learn to love and know 
and help one another.” 

En preparation 

NEW ILLUSTRATED EDITIONS OF MISS ALCOTT’S OTHER BOOKS 

JO’S BOYS, and How They Turned Out. * 

EIGHT COUSINS; or, The Aunt-Hill 
ROSE IN BLOOM. A Sequel to “ Eight Cousins ” 

UNDER THE LILACS 

JACK AND JILL. A Village Story 


LITTLE, BROWN, & COMPANY 

Publishers, 254 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON, MASS. 


4 ) P 5 I 


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